Jenni Gilbert
Sitting in the dentist’s chair is not a spot people normally associate with anti-ageing treatments. Yet it is the piece of the beautification puzzle that is too often overlooked.
Your clients are willing to invest time and money to look and feel better. They will be Botoxed, filled and lasered, have their skin peeled and pummeled.
But when they open their mouths, literally, all that good work can go to waste if their smile, well, sucks.
It’s scientifically documented that a beautiful smile can make a person look significantly younger, more attractive (indeed can transform someone hitherto average-looking into a stunning beauty) and be perceived as healthier, more popular and successful than they necessarily are.
To that end cosmetic dentistry has become a boom industry over the past 20 years, initially driven by people wanting to emulate “Hollywood smiles”, as per Julia Roberts’ (pictured top).
Your smile is one of the first things that people notice about you, and it’s said time and again you only have one chance to make a good first impression.
Many people will have a knee-jerk reaction to your appearance, causing them to either like or disapprove of you almost instantly.
“Not fair”, you say? Yes, but unfortunately that is human nature. We may not like the game, but it is part of the “rules of life”.
A beautiful smile makes a great first impression. It is one of the key reasons people are perceived as attractive, successful or youthful.
Misaligned, badly shaped, gapped, crooked or discoloured teeth, on the other hand, may not only look unattractive and unhealthy but literally drag the face down. This in turn affects a person’s overall appearance.
Most people are “okay” or happy with their teeth and smile, but there are many who aren’t. They feel self-conscious when they laugh or meet people for the first time and refuse to smile for photos, let alone take selfies.
A flawed smile can also be one of the most ageing features of the face and contribute to health problems such as snoring, jaw pain and chronic headaches.
Teeth primarily hold the facial bones in place. As we get older or lose teeth, the jawbone is less supportive and the face sinks, contributing to an older appearance.
It may result in uneven lips and reduced lip support, which in turn contributes to deep grooves between the nose and mouth corners, aka nasolabial folds.
People nowadays will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on dermal filler injections to counteract these hallmarks of ageing. Yet, in many cases, they are not addressing the real problem – the structure of the smile.
Maintaining a healthy, attractive smile becomes increasingly challenging, especially after age 35.
Many of us look older, plainer and more tired as we get older because we lose lower facial “height”.
In other words, the depth of our face from nose to chin is reduced as we age. Think of the collapsed, “gurning” [muscle tension in the face] appearance of an elderly person with no teeth.
A modified version of this look comes to most of us just through the ageing process and modern maladies such as “phone face” and “tech neck”.
We grind our teeth, or simply wear them down through age, eating and stress.
This reduces the height of the bottom third of our face, from nose to chin.
However, aesthetic and functional solutions are available into a person’s 80s and beyond.
This is the reason more and more that medi-cosmetic and aesthetics professionals are collaborating with dental professionals across the board to provide the nest possible holistic outcomes for their patients/clients, for appearance as well as health.
As we age, our faces lose volume, especially from under our eyes and our cheeks. This is widely attributed to loss of fat, but we can lose up to 40 per cent of the muscle tone of the face from the age of 20 to 60, exacerbated by what’s happening with the teeth/jaw.
It is this loss of volume, not gravity, that makes skin become loose.
Instead of a tight “triangle of youth” – with the point being our narrow chin and the widest point our cheekbones – we develop a reversed ageing triangle, with thin cheeks and wide, saggy jowls.
This change has been well documented, and there as a result is considerable focus on how the fat we lose from our cheeks can be replaced with fillers.
Many dental professionals believe we can enhance or – sorry(!) – replace these results with attention to the teeth.
WHITENING
The truth is that the whiteness of teeth is no indication of your dental health. Some people with very white teeth have multiple dental caries or even gum disease, while other individuals with severely stained teeth may have no other oral health problems.
So why is tooth whitening important? Your appearance can be dramatically altered just by the colour of your teeth.
Individuals with stained, yellow teeth are perceived as being both older than they are and unhealthy. A white, straight smile is often perceived as an indication of youthful health.
A solution is of course to recommend to your clients advanced dental solutions, but there are whitening solutions you can also offer in-clinic.
VENEERS
Using teeth veneers, for example, can give better lip and cheek support, fill out the top lip and enhance facial expression.
There are also several options available to improve the colour and shape of the teeth, remodel the shape of the smile, close gaps and to improve the gum line.
The evolution of composite materials today, with enhanced bonding to tooth structure, has increased the dentist’s ability to control aesthetics in his/her own practice with predictable success and with no laboratory cost.
The selection of composite materials offers a variety of shades and opacities of enamel and are used to achieve natural colour and aesthetics in a relatively short, simple and predictable manner.
The technique can be applied to patients of all ages and the results can be astounding.
ORTHODONTICS
All too often, when people hear the word “braces” they think of an adolescent, with a mouth full of metal. As an adult, braces may not seem reasonable, but it’s true.
Adult braces are becoming more and more commonplace in today’s society, as the alignment of teeth change with age and affect health and facial appearance.
Incredible advances in hardware and technique make braces obtainable and aesthetically pleasing for anyone, including adults who are self-conscious about their smile.
In fact, many options for adult braces are hardly noticeable at all. Clear brackets, lingual braces and options such as Invisalign [virtually invisible aligners made of plastic that you wear over your teeth to gradually move them to the ideal position] are all great options for adults who don’t want braces to alter their appearance.
Even in traditional metal braces, the brackets that adhere to teeth, are much smaller than the brackets of years past, and are much less invasive.
Another reason why adult braces have become so much more important to personal health is that straight teeth have health benefits far beyond that award-winning smile.
Straight teeth reduce the amount of plaque that gathers in crevices, and less plaque can lower your chances for gum disease, which has been linked to heart disease and diabetes.
Straighter teeth also allow for better brushing, keeping your teeth healthier and in place for longer.
