Dental Blog - Clapham South Dental Centre

A clear view even with braces

It can be strangely fascinating to see a grown adult with metal braces all over their teeth. Have you ever found yourself unable to stop staring at someone who is clearly long out of full-time education and yet is wearing the full train track look? Don’t you wish you could look away? Don’t you wish you could ask them what could be so horribly wrong with their teeth that even now they still have braces on? Have they been wearing braces for 15 years instead of the usual 2?

Clear Braces in Clapham Imagine now being that poor person. You can bet your boots that you’re not the only person who can’t stop staring at them, wanting to know their story. And if you are in need of braces yourself, imagining being that person is enough to put you off. Thankfully, with clear braces in Clapham at Clapham South Dental centre you never have to be that person. Instead, you can glide through your treatment knowing that your clear braces in Clapham, blend in with your teeth and people have to get pretty close to you to spot them. And when they do, they will see subtle, attractive braces that look more like mouth jewellery than a straightening device.

How clear braces in Clapham work

You can choose between fixed and removable braces. The fixed braces work on the front 6-8 teeth only. These teeth have only one root and are therefore easier to move. With smaller forces required, the brackets are smaller (and made of clear ceramic) and the wires are finer too (and coated in a tooth-coloured material). These braces work best on mild to moderate misalignment issues and take only a few months to do so.

Our removable clear braces look more like mouth guards. Made of very thin, transparent plastic, they pretty much become invisible when you put them on over your teeth. You take them out for eating and cleaning but you must wear them for at least 22 hours a day to stay on schedule with treatment. The average treatment time for these aligners is one year.

Both kinds of clear braces in Clapham require you to wear a retainer for an indefinite period after straightening is completed.

Keep that professional look with Invisalign in Clapham

It would be nice if people were not so shallow as to make snap judgments about others based entirely on their appearance, but, they do. In a way, it’s not our fault we do this. Back in the mists of time before we could speak, we evolved to notice each’s smiles and the state of the teeth behind the grin. The smile told us if the stranger in question was friendly or likely to tear us limb from limb if we got too close. Looking at the teeth was one way to tell how healthy someone was. Dodgy teeth equal dodgy health and you didn’t want to get too close.

Invisalign in Clapham Interestingly, the more we discover about teeth, the more this is proving to be true, with decay and gum disease being linked to all sorts of diseases and conditions of ill-health in the body. Having straight teeth means having teeth that are easier to keep free from decay and gum disease, but getting straight teeth means having a dodgy smile for quite a while. Or, at least, it used to. But not anymore, now that you can get Invisalign in Clapham from Clapham South Dental Centre.

What is Invisalign in Clapham?

Invisalign changed the face of teeth straightening when it came on the market back in the late 1990s. It did so by not changing the face of the people using it. Invisalign in Clapham uses a series of see-through, plastic devices that look like very thin mouth guards. When they go on over the teeth, they are so thin and well-fitting that they cannot be seen except by the super observant.

You get a series of these aligners. You start off with aligner number 1 and when you put it in for the first time, it will feel uncomfortable, like it doesn’t quite fit properly, with bits pressing on various teeth. But, bear with it. It is these pressing bits that are gently getting your teeth to shift position. After 7-10 days the jawbone will have dissolved and rebuilt itself to relieve this pressure. You change to the next in the series, and so on, until your teeth are aligned.

Fresh-faced for winter

Here we go again, back into 6 months of dark mornings, dark nights and looking exhausted under electric light. Winter in London isn’t kind to anyone’s face. So what can you do to get yourself through the gloom that lies ahead? You could go and get your hair lightened. That’ll cost a fortune and last about 3 weeks. You could buy a new wardrobe. That’ll cost a bomb and be so last season next year. You could book a holiday somewhere sunny. Another fortune spent for 2 weeks respite. It’s hardly money well spent. How about knocking a few years off your face with Botox in Clapham? It’s really not that expensive and it lasts for several months.

Botox in Clapham will certainly get you through the worst of the winter and you can have a top-up treatment for those miserable last weeks and the early spring. You’ll be looking fresh as a daisy just in time for the snowdrops. And if you come to Clapham South Dental Centre for Botox in Clapham, you can rest assured you will look as natural as a daisy too, because our dentists really understand how all those bits under your skin work together. After all, we spent years and years in dental school learning the anatomy of the head, face and neck and since then, we’ve been working with precision injecting ever since we graduated, which was quite some time ago.

How Botox in Clapham works

You probably know all about Botox; it’s been around for years now. It’s the purified protein of the Botulinum type A toxin. When we inject tiny amounts of it into your facial muscles, it blocks the signalling between the nerves and the muscle. This means that those wrinkles that are caused by habitually contracting particular muscles start to relax. Over the course of the following week, they smooth out and appear finer, maybe even disappear.

Botox works really well on the wrinkles around the eyes, eyebrows and forehead as well as the upper lip. We know just how much to use to relax your muscles without making you look like you got frozen in the cold.

Now you see them, now you don’t: invisible braces in Clapham

If you could get your wonky teeth lined up properly, and do it without people knowing what you were up to, would you go for it? If you have answered yes to this question, you are not alone. Many people would love to get their teeth straightened, but cannot face going through months of squirming self-consciousness every time they open their mouths and show the world the clunky metal train track braces cemented onto their teeth. Train track braces are for kids, right? Maybe they are, but that does not preclude adults getting their teeth realigned, because here at Clapham South Dental Centre, we have a great range of invisible braces in Clapham.

What are invisible braces in Clapham?

Invisible braces is an umbrella term used in the dental profession for any teeth straightening devices that have been designed with discretion in mind. Some are more invisible than others, but all are way less intrusive than the metal braces we all associate with the gawky early teenage years.

Dr Crandon can help you find the right invisible braces in Clapham for you

Dr Tomos Crandon is our resident braces dentist. He has spent extra years after dental school studying for a postgraduate degree in braces dentistry and many years after that working as a braces dentist. When you see Dr Crandon, you are getting treatment from a highly skilled and experienced dentist. He will be able to advise you on which braces are best for realigning your teeth.

The treatment times vary depending on what needs to be done. Teeth can only move so fast, but the younger you are, the quicker your jawbone is able to resorb and rebuild the bone. This is the process that moves the teeth. We put pressure on them and the jawbone responds to this process to relieve the sustained pressure. Keeping up the pressure in a particular direction is how we can get your teeth lined up properly.

After you finish your braces treatment, you will need to wear a retainer, either bonded to the back of your teeth or a removable one, to keep your teeth in place while the bone hardens around them.

The clear path to straight teeth

So, you have decided to get your teeth straightened. You’ve been thinking about it for years and you’ve put it off because you don’t want to look like a nerdy teenager with clunky chunks of metal and wire all over your teeth. However, despite that you know that straight teeth are easier to keep clean and tend to last longer than wonky ones so you are going to do it anyway.

If you come to us at Clapham South Dental Centre, you can probably avoid all that embarrassment of looking like a baddy from a James Bond movie, with clear braces in Clapham.

You didn’t know about clear braces in Clapham? Well that’s hardly surprising. They are clear so that people can’t see them when they are on your teeth. This means that during casual interactions in day-to-day life, you can easily miss the fact that someone is wearing clear braces in Clapham.

Fixed clear braces in Clapham

These are like traditional metal braces but they are much smaller. The brackets are constructed using clear ceramic and they are strung through with a fine wire that is coated with a tooth-coloured material. Generally speaking, these braces are designed for moving the front 6-8 teeth, which are the ones people see the most of when you are talking or smiling. These teeth have only one root so the forces needed to move them are gentler, which is why the braces can be smaller. Treatment times can be only a few months, especially if the movements needed are small.

Removable clear braces in Clapham

These look like mouth guards, but the plastic is very thin and they hug the teeth like a second skin. The movement is achieved not by tightening a wire but by using a series of aligners, each with a slightly different set of pressure points inside them. You work your way through the series and by the end, your teeth are lovely and straight.

Retainers

Everyone needs to wear a retainer after treatment is complete. This is because the bone is not yet set hard and the teeth could wander around if not held in place.

Now you see them, now you don’t, with Invisalign in Clapham

What do you want your perfect teeth straightening device to be able to do for you, apart, from the obvious, which, of course, is to straighten your teeth?

Do you want your straightening device to take over your entire mouth, your life even? Or would you prefer it to be as much in the background as possible, not interfering with either how you look or your diet, as so many braces are liable to do?

If you want your braces to be pretty much invisible and stay out of the way when it comes to food choices, then you don’t need braces, you need Invisalign in Clapham.

Never seen Invisalign in Clapham before?

Well that’s hardly surprising, considering that instead of brackets and wires you get clear plastic aligners that go over your teeth like mouth guards, only way thinner, so thin, in fact, that once they are in place, no one really notices you are wearing them.

But rest assured, here at Clapham South Dental Centre, lots of our patients with mildly to moderately misaligned teeth have used them, plenty are using them right now. You may even have sat in the waiting room and been smiled at by one of our patients wearing Invisalign in Clapham, only you’d never know, because these aligners are so discreet.

What about food?

Invisalign aligners are removable. You take them out when you want to eat or drink anything that’s not just water. You eat, brush your teeth and put your aligners back in. Having aligners gives you the freedom to eat whatever you like; there are no restrictions for fear of damaging your device. All you have to do is be sure to wear your aligners for 20-22 hours a day, every day, during the length of your treatment. Your teeth need sustained pressure in order to move, and if you don’t maintain this, it can extend the length of your treatment, which, by the way, takes a year, on average.

Not everyone can wear Invisalign in Clapham, but the way to find out if your alignment issues are suitable is to come in for a free consultation with one of accredited Invisalign providers.

Get natural looking Botox in Clapham

This week you started thinking about ways to get your face rejuvenated, and you’ve been wondering about where to go for Botox in Clapham. Yes beauty therapists are great, but did you ever think about using your dentist for Botox?

It may seem odd, but going to the dentist for Botox in Clapham is becoming popular and there are good reasons why.

Experts in faces

Dentists have an in-depth knowledge of faces. They spend 5 years at dental school learning about teeth and mouths, so a deep understanding of the face, head, neck and throat also form part of their dental training. By the time dentists get around to training in facial aesthetics treatments, they have already been working with all the facial nerves and tendons, muscles and tissue you want Botox in Clapham to work on.

This is a big advantage over other Botox therapists. Feeling good about our face is vital to our overall wellbeing so it makes sense to go someone who is medically trained for Botox. It may be a temporary treatment, but it lasts for several months.

At Clapham South Dental Centre, we already have a great many patients who are more than happy with the quality of the general and cosmetic dental treatment we provide. We have extended the provision of 5-star treatment in our comfortable and caring environment to now include facial aesethetics by dentists already so good at taking care of nervous dental patients. Your health and wellbeing are at the centre of everything we do.

Botox is used on particular areas where the wrinkles have come about because the muscles are habitually contracted. It works really well on the laughter lines around the sides of the eyes, frown lines between the brows, worry lines on the forehead and lines around the mouth.

When we inject just the right amount of Botox into the lines, it works to temporarily block the nerve impulses to the muscles. Over the course of the following week or so, the lines relax and smooth out. Our knowledge and skills with delicate needle work mean that the results will have you looking younger and refreshed but not frozen and unable to form natural expressions.

Sleek and stylish, if you can see them

When it comes to braces for straightening teeth, the best look is no look at all. People don’t want to make a feature out of their braces treatment, unless they are under 15. Maybe one day, Gucci and Dolce & Gabanna will be at the forefront of braces fashion, but, until they are, the most stylish braces are those that can’t be seen, such as Invisalign in Clapham.

Here at Clapham South Dental Centre, we kit out our patients with mild to moderate alignment issues with Invisalign in Clapham because we know that, for most of them, discretion is a key requirement of their straightening treatment.

How does Invisalign do it?

Being un-spottable is achieved by not having brackets and wires, but instead using very thin, see-through plastic aligners that look like mouth guards. The aligners go on over the teeth, nestling up against the gums. Because the plastic is only 0.3mm thick, and moulded to the shape of each patient’s teeth, they are more like another layer of tooth enamel than a mouth guard. This incredible fit is achieved by 3D printing the aligners, made to measure to each person’s individual tooth and jaw shape.

More severe cases

Because Invisalign only works on mild to moderate cases, patients who have more severe issues going on with their teeth can start off with traditional braces and switch to Invisalign in Clapham when their teeth have straightened out enough.

Eating and drinking is a doddle

Everyone loves the fact that with Invisalign in Clapham, there’s no need to spend ages locked in the bathroom trying to get bits of food or dental plaque out from under the aligners. This is because the aligners are removable. You just take them out whenever you want to consume anything more than plain water. All your favourite foods are still on the menu, and cleaning your teeth takes no more time than usual.

With Clapham South Dental Centre, Invisalign can be yours from £125 a month. Why don’t you come in for a consultation and find out how easy it is to get great teeth?

New faces with Botox in Clapham

Are you getting a bit weary of watching your eyes disappear behind a sea of folds and wrinkles? Are worry lines bringing your eyebrows together and are crow’s feet lines more dramatic than your eyeliner? Are smoker’s lines making your lippy bleed outside your lip-line? If so, maybe now is the time to think about getting Botox in Clapham from us at Clapham South Dental Centre.

Botox has been around for a good while now. We have been offering it for a while now too. It might seem a bit odd to go to your dentist for Botox in Clapham, but if you think about it, surely it makes sense to get injections from people who were trained by the best at dental school to administer injections as gently as possible and in just the right amounts?

As dentists, we already have a deep knowledge of all the nerves, tendons, and muscles that make up the face, and the skin that covers them all. We know where the skin connects to the face, where nerves meet muscles and tendons, and we use this knowledge to great effect when we treat people with Botox in Clapham.

What exactly is Botox?

Although you may have heard of Botox lots of times, you may not be clear what it is or how it works. Let’s explain. Botox is a brand name. The actual treatment is made from a toxin called Botulinum that has been purified to produce a protein. We inject this into your skin, where the nerves meet the muscles. The Botox interferes with the messaging between the nerve ending and the muscle, stopping the muscle from contracting. How much Botox goes in determines how much movement is reduced. Back in the day, and even now with some beauty therapists, treatment was heavy-handed and people ended up looking frozen. Being dentists, we have the skills to deliver just the right amount of Botox to relax your muscles, but not completely paralyse them.

The effects take about a week to come through completely and then last for about 4 months. We recommend top-up treatments after about 3 months.

Month by month – investigating invisible braces in Clapham

Once you begin your journey towards straight teeth with us at Clapham South Dental Centre, we will be with you as the months roll by to support you through treatment. People choose to have their invisible braces in Clapham with us because of our professional levels of care and communication.

When you start your treatment with us, we’ll break down the different steps and milestones, so you can see your way all the way to the end of your treatment. The months will soon fly by when you know what to look forward to with invisible braces in Clapham.

Less than a month till you’re on your way

Once you have had your initial consultation with us, we can get you underway relatively quickly. We need to plan your treatment and undertake various scans to gather the data we need to allow our partners to make the braces you need to achieve the smile you have always dreamed of.

Depending on the method you choose to work with, you may need a fitting appointment where we affix your braces to your teeth. If you choose to work with invisible braces in Clapham like Invisalign, your first appointment will simply consist of picking up your new set of aligners.

Monthly check-ups

Once your treatment is underway, you will visit us every six weeks or so. This will allow us to monitor your treatment to check that everything is progressing as planned. We can make small adjustments along the way according to the needs of your teeth or in response to feedback from you.

Spreading the cost

One of the other ways we can help month by month is to offer you a finance plan that helps to spread the cost. As your treatment progress, you can pay a certain amount each month towards your procedure. For many people, this means that they can get going straight away without having to wait. It makes the options more accessible for people and allows them to budget. Finance is subject to a status check. We can talk to you more about this when you visit us for invisible braces in Clapham.