Is Anxiety Damaging Your Oral Health?

Avoiding appointments simply stores up problems for the future.

Like many dentists, we see a lot of nervous dental patients on a regular basis at our Burton on Trent dental practice, and fortunately most just accept that visiting the dentist is a necessary if not especially pleasant experience. Having overcome their dental anxiety to some extent, these patients, thankfully, stand a good chance of having good oral health throughout their lives with, hopefully, minimal treatments needed.

More nervous patients though are prone to missing appointments unfortunately. Whilst we sympathise with this and understand their fears, the problems can be easily exacerbated whereby a minor problem is allowed to get worse, possibly resulting in a much more invasive procedure than might otherwise have been needed at the missed appointment.

These missed appointments are also inconvenient for our dentists who could have otherwise seen another patient who may have been in pain. So overall not a good situation for the patient or their dentist.

Professional care

Our dental team pride themselves on their care and attention to each individual patient’s needs and are sensitive to those suffering from dental anxiety. We know that even a simple dental check up can cause significant fear for some people, despite the fact that no procedures will be carried out. We encourage our patients to talk to us about their dental anxieties so that we can help to put them at ease.

In many cases, the fears stem from not understanding a treatment and so we are always keen to discuss this with you if you feel it would be of benefit. We can also make suggestions as to how you might take action to reduce your anxiety levels. This can be anything from simple relaxation techniques to visiting your GP for help, perhaps with suitable medication.

Prevention

For those with dental anxiety, prevention of dental problems is clearly very important. By ensuring that you visit Mike Allen’s Dental Practice in Burton for regular checks, we hope to help you to keep your teeth and gums healthy with only minimal intervention perhaps from time to time. Without professional dental care though, less visible problems such as gum disease can start to occur and lead to the need for more invasive treatments.

If you are anxious about dental visits and would like to talk to our Burton dental team to see how we can help, please call us today on 01283 845345 and let us help you through it.