cosmetic dentist in Carmel IN

Improve Your Look Without Surgery!

By on July 1, 2015

When it comes to your appearance, your Really Smile dentist (in Carmel, IN) can do a lot for your smile and the look (and health) of your teeth. Of course, your appearance isn’t just about how good your teeth look; there’s a whole face surrounding your teeth!

Over the years, you might have noticed that your face has begun to sag, and your chin and nose even seem to be getting closer together. This is a natural part of aging, but that doesn’t mean you have to live with it. The facelift is one of the most popular plastic surgery procedures, but many people have misgivings about actually going under the knife to improve their appearance.

What if we told you your dentist could make you look years younger without surgery? Your Really Smile Dentist can give you a whole new “lease on youth” with a non-surgical facelift.

What is A Non-Surgical Facelift?

A conventional facelift is an intensive surgical procedure. To eliminate wrinkles and sagging in the face, a plastic surgeon removes “excess” skin from your face and neck, then tightens the skin and tissues that remain.

Sounds pretty gruesome, doesn’t it? The good news is you don’t have to go under the knife! Instead of surgically altering your body’s tissues, we focus on how improvements we can make to your teeth, jaws, and the structures of your face to improve your appearance.

What is the Relationship Between My Teeth and the Look of My Face?

Your teeth are an important part of your anatomy; they play a role in the digestive system (chewing and grinding food), and they also part of what makes you look like you.

Have you ever sat on a wobbly chair? It makes you keep an odd posture to stay upright and It’s not very comfortable. It’s usually because one leg is somewhat shorter than the others, or is missing a foot pad. In a restaurant, your waiter might fix the problem with a book of matches.

Your teeth and face operate on a similar principal. Your teeth are the “legs” of the chair, but over time, your teeth become worn and sustain other damage that affects how they are aligned. If your teeth get sufficiently misaligned due to wear and damage, your face will slowly develop that “collapsed flan” look that is considered a characteristic of extreme old age.

How Does It Work?

Your dentist will need to examine your teeth, face, and other important anatomical structures to determine exactly where the problem areas are. Your dentist will use a number of interventions to create a specific treatment plan just for you. Your Really Smile Dentist is not just a great dentist, but is also a specialist in neuromuscular dentistry. Neuromuscular dentistry is a discipline within dentistry that focuses on how the alignment of the jaws and teeth affect other bodily systems, including the appearance of the face and the maintenance of its shape. This expertise allows us to approach cosmetic dentistry from a holistic, or “whole-face” approach.

While the procedures your dentist might use to resolve your specific issue vary, none of them require invasive surgery; this means healing time is short (if any at all) and you’ll be able to re-enter the world with a beautiful new face without ever setting foot in an operation hall!

Want To Improve Your Looks Without Surgery?

Your Really Smile team is ready to help! We offer a range of cosmetic and general dentistry procedures and services to help you achieve your best look without surgery. Call us for a consultation and learn how we can can help!

Dial 317-597-8748, or click here to reach our online appointment form to book your visit now!

A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words: Digital Imaging!

By on May 29, 2015

At Really Smile (in Carmel, IN), we take the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” very seriously. Digital imaging allows us to provide you with unprecedented clarity and understanding about the procedures we recommend, as well as give you an up-close look at the state of your teeth. Ever wondered what your dentist sees when he looks into your mouth? Well, now you can get a look too!

Most people can really only see the teeth that are visible when they smile, and that can give a false impression of the health of your teeth. You might think you’re taking care of your oral health, but until you see it with your own eyes (like the dentist does) you won’t really know! Digital imaging provides the opportunity to do that. It also greatly enhances our ability to diagnose oral health problems and create treatment plans with greater accuracy than ever before.

What Digital Imaging Technologies Does Really Smile Have?

It used to be that there was really only one way to get an image of your teeth: an X-ray machine: you know, that big cannon looking thing that we’d point at your teeth while you wore a lead blanket?

Today, we have a lot more options. Across the board, our current fleet of digital imaging equipment is:

More Comfortable For You, The Patient

More Accurate

More Useful (without advanced digital imaging technology, some of the procedures we offer almost wouldn’t be possible!)

Let’s examine the technologies that we use to enhance your dental experience, and which allow us to offer the very best in treatments.

Cone Beam CT Scan (CBCT)

The Cone Beam CT Scan (CBCT) is an evolution of the CT Scan, which you might know better as a CAT scan. CT stands for computed tomography. Tomography comes from the Greek word tomos, which means “section” and grapho, “to write”, or “to write in sections”. A CT scan will take many cross-sectional images of your teeth, and then those images are combined into a single image for viewing.

Cone Beam CT does the same thing, but with the added benefit that the images are in 3-D (three dimensions). The “cone” in CBCT refers to the X-ray beam itself. Instead of taking a single two-dimensional X-ray image, the CBCT rotates around your head and takes hundreds of sectional images.This allows us to view your teeth, make diagnoses, and create treatment plans (for a wide range of procedures) with greater speed and accuracy than ever before.

I/O Camera

“I/O” stands for intraoral. This imaging technology is about as close to a spy camera as you’ll ever get in a dentist’s office! It not only allows the dentist to get a much clearer view of your mouth, but it also allows you the patient to get a look too!

The genius of the I/O camera concept is in its simplicity. It’s a small camera on the end of a wand. This is much more useful than a dental mirror to get a look at your teeth, and it has the added benefit of being recordable as well if necessary. Patients really appreciate the I/O camera, because now they can understand why the dentist is making certain recommendations, and it allows them to get a real handle on the state of their oral health!

Laser Cavity Detection System

Where the I/O camera might replace a dental mirror, the Laser Cavity Detection System might replace the sharp metal objects we use to find cavities.

Before Laser Cavity Detection, the only way to find a cavity was to poke around your teeth with a sharp metal tool to see if it gets caught on a cavity. There are two problems with this: one, it’s not terribly accurate, and two, it only allows you to find cavities that are large enough for the tool to fit in! Cavities grow over time, and if it’s big enough for one of our tools to get caught in it, it’s already pretty advanced.

Laser Cavity Detection uses a laser beam to measure the density of your enamel. This allows us to identify decay that’s smaller than a needle point (which is much smaller than the metal tool). This is especially beneficial because if we catch a cavity early enough, all that’s required to treat it is the remineralization of the enamel: no filling required!

i-Tero Digital Impressions

i-Tero Digital Impressions are an indispensable part of our technological arsenal. Your teeth are scanned with a handheld device, which produced a 3-D digital image. This is used to make a digital impression, which your dentist will use to create treatment plans.

Once the digital impression is made and the treatment plan is complete (usually only after a few minutes), the file is sent directly to wherever it needs to go to create a restoration (crown and bridges), implant, or Invislign aligners.

Before digital impressions, there were just impressions. Your dentist would fill a tray with a gooey substance that you would hold in your mouth; the goo would solidify, leaving an imprint of your teeth. Though still in common use, physical impressions are uncomfortable for the patient, not entirely accurate, and they can’t be stored if you need a replacement for one dental appliance or another (they’re large and fragile: we’d need a lot more closet space if we wanted to keep the physical impressions of all our patients!).

Choose Really Smile for your next procedure!

Imaging makes our job easier, of course, and we have a lot of imaging technology that can help us consistently provide you with the best possible care. However, it’s not for our convenience that we’ve made these investments in our equipment. Digital imaging is a powerful tool that allows us to communicate better with our patients.

Don’t just get dentistry; get dentistry on the cutting edge!

Call our office at 317-597-8748, or click here to make an appointment now, online!

The Value of In-Office Teeth Whitening

By on May 9, 2015

The most popular procedure in all of cosmetic dentistry is teeth whitening or teeth bleaching. If your smile has lost its gleam and color (for whatever reason), our practice in Carmel, IN has the tools and talent to give you back a smile that is vibrant, bright, and youthful.

One of the questions we hear quite often in our office when it comes to teeth whitening is whether or not in-office teeth whitening treatments are any different from those that you can buy in a store, or have done in a beauty shop (or a shopping mall). These at-home kits are often referred to as over-the-counter (OTC) or do-it-yourself (DIY) whitening treatments.

It’s easy to see why they’ve become so popular. OTC whitening kits are heavily advertised and they’re available everywhere. They’re also perceived to be less expensive than a treatment from a dentist and more convenient because they don’t require you to make an appointment.

But perceptions aren’t the same as reality. Let’s examine some of the key differences between OTC and DIY kits and the treatments you’ll get from your dentist.

The whitening gel that your dentist uses is much more powerful than those that you can buy in a store.

Whitening gels use hydrogen peroxide to do the work of whitening and bleaching (though there are some that use other chemicals). This is how whitening gels work: the active ingredient (the ingredient that actually whitens your teeth; in most cases, it’s hydrogen peroxide) is released from the gel once it is applied. Your teeth may look solid, but in fact they’re covered with microscopic pits. The molecules that cause stains get trapped in these pits; over time, the stains will change the color of your teeth and dim your smile. During whitening, the hydrogen peroxide makes its way into these pits, removing and destroying the stain molecules. The result is a bright, white smile!

The whitening gel is the first big difference between what you can buy at the store and what you’ll get in the office. OTC whitening gels usually contain around 7% hydrogen peroxide. On the other hand, whitening gels that your dentist uses can have anywhere from 35% to 45% hydrogen peroxide in them. The more hydrogen peroxide, the more dramatic the transformation of your smile!

The strips and trays you get in OTC kits are “one-size-fits-all”.

OTC teeth whitening kits generally use strips (which you apply to your teeth like a bandaid) and trays (you fill the tray with whitening gel and place the tray over your teeth; they’re somewhat similar to athletic mouthguards).

The problem with these is that OTC strips and trays are “one-size-fits-all”. With a few exceptions, most things that are designed to fit everyone usually don’t fit anyone. We use trays in our office because trays are more effective than strips, and our trays are custom-made.

Custom-made trays are much better at their job than OTC trays. A tray that is custom-made for your teeth will fit your teeth exactly how they’re supposed to. This will allow the whitening gel to go exactly where it needs to go to whiten your teeth. Also, a custom-made tray’s superior fit means that once it’s in place, it stays in place. OTC trays won’t give you the same fit. The gel isn’t optimally placed and OTC trays tend to slide around. It just isn’t possible to get the maximum whitening value from OTC trays. If you have sensitive gums, whitening gels can cause you serious discomfort. When OTC trays slide around, they also spill the gel they contain. That can mean incredible pain for those with sensitive gums!

You can’t buy expertise in a store!

In the film The Matrix, one memorable scene shows Keanu Reeves receiving a download of information directly to his brain. After only a few seconds, he mutters famously to himself, “I know Kung-Fu.”

In the future, it might be possible to download the expertise needed to get a superior teeth whitening treatment, but today, there is no way to replace the experience and knowledge of a trained dentist.

Your dentist wants you to have your very best smile, but his first priority is your oral health and comfort. Your dentist will evaluate your teeth and consider your entire dental history before determining the best possible whitening treatment for you. Your comfort during a teeth whitening treatment is critical, because if you feel discomfort or pain during the process, it’s likely you won’t be able to complete the treatment, and your smile won’t be any better off than it was before you even started thinking about whitening!

In addition, your dentist is an expert in teeth whitening and bleaching. Some things are just better when left in the hands of an expert!

Get the most value from your whitening dollar!

In the end, it’s about value vs. the amount you spend. OTC treatments may appear to be less expensive, but the value of the treatment that they provide is much less than what you’ll receive from a dentist with the training, experience, and equipment needed to maximize your teeth whitening experience.

If you’re thinking about whitening or bleaching your teeth to brighten your smile and get the dazzling look you’ve been missing for a long time, make an appointment with us today!

Call our office at 317-597-8748 and a member of our friendly staff will help you! Alternatively, you can use our handy online appointment form to schedule your whitening treatment right now!

An Advanced Approach to Cosmetic Dentistry

By on March 25, 2015

Cosmetic dentistry is a very effective way for you to get the dental care that will transform your smile into something truly special! Many of our patients in the Indianapolis, IN area come to us because they have been wanting a transformation for YEARS. Some have been saving for their entire life to get a beautiful smile!

We think this is fantastic! We have a unique approach to cosmetic dentistry that makes Really Smile the office for you. We don’t stop at the way your smile looks. We want you to be confident in every aspect of your smile, and that means taking care of your ENTIRE smile.

You want the smile of your dreams, right? So let’s achieve that goal, and let’s make sure that you can maintain that smile for many years to come! Ready to begin?

Getting the Smile of Your Dreams

There’s no reason for ANYONE to walk through life with a smile they hate! In fact, research shows that there can be psychological effects, especially if you are missing teeth! You are more likely to develop anxiety or depression!

You want to feel confident! You know that if your smile isn’t up to par, you won’t feel much like smiling. That affects your confidence! If you aren’t comfortable smiling, the people around you notice, and you notice it, too! A touch of the right kind of cosmetic dental work can completely change the way you feel!

The “Other” Approach

So you know you want to change the look of your smile, but what does that actually look like in the dental office? In other offices, you will find that the approach isn’t top notch. Rather than dealing with the actual problem, the dentist will just try to make it look like there isn’t anything wrong!

In other words, the bad look of your teeth will be covered, but how long will it last? There’s a reason why your smile ended up the way it was, and it will take over again, which means you’ll be patching and covering your smile again and again for the rest of your life!

Our Advanced Approach

We take a different approach. We don’t see much value in covering the problem without dealing with the problem. This is your smile that we are talking about! You want to see it improved, and we can help. Take a look at our process below.

Find the Cause – If you come into our office with a damaged smile, we want to find out what caused the damage! It could be a very simple cause that you’re fully aware of, or it could be something that has plagued you for years, and you have no idea why!

Solve the Problem – Once we know WHY your smile is in its current state, we will work to solve that problem! We have the ability to handle general dentistry problems as well as complex issues, so you are in great hands at Really Smile!

Repair the Damage – We know the cause, we have solved the problem, and NOW it is time to repair the damage. We have a HUGE variety of cosmetic procedures that will allow us to whiten, restore, straighten, or replace any or all of the teeth in your smile!

Enjoy Your Smile! – The last step is for you to enjoy your smile. You’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, and it’s finally here. You will be able to smile when you look in the mirror. You will feel confident when you meet new people. You can ENJOY your life again!

Come See Us Today!

Are you ready to take the most advanced approach to your cosmetic solutions? It’s time to set up a consultation at Really Smile today! Contact us to grab your spot in our calendar. We would love to hear from you soon, and we cannot wait to get started on your dream smile!

cosmetic dentist in Carmel IN

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