Well being

Root canal treatment has the worst reputation of anything in dentistry, and most of that reputation is forty years out of date.

Whitening is the one piece of dentistry most often bought in the wrong place. In the UK, the law is the most useful thing to know about it.

What a tooth needs depends on how much sound tooth is left: a filling, something that holds it together, or a decision about whether to replace it at all.

First teeth can decay from the moment they appear, and brushing starts earlier than most people expect, with the first tooth, not the first full set.

Gum disease is the commonest cause of tooth loss in adults, and it takes teeth that have nothing else wrong with them. The early stage is completely reversible; the later stage is not, but it can be stopped at any point — and loose teeth are not automatically for extraction.

Fluoride is the most effective thing available for preventing decay, and it does not work the way it is usually described — which changes what is worth doing about it. How it works at the tooth surface, where it comes from in the UK, and what the evidence on water fluoridation and fluorosis actually shows.

Nobody who only brushes is cleaning their teeth: a brush cannot reach the surfaces where two teeth touch, and that is where decay and gum disease start. Brushing technique and the damage done by brushing too hard, interdental brushes and floss, and the things that make the rest harder.