Unfortunately, due to many reasons, such health problems occur that teeth simply crumble. This can occur at different ages, with baby teeth in children and permanent teeth in adults. What to do? Of course, you should see a doctor. Go to the dentist, and after the examination he can refer you to a specialist and advise you to undergo an examination.
Symptoms
It is difficult to miss such a fact when a tooth has crumbled. This usually occurs while eating, and a hard piece of enamel is felt in the mouth. Sometimes there are many small pieces at once. There is a feeling of panic. After all, we know from school that enamel is the hardest tissue in the body. Why does this happen, causing teeth to crumble and crack?
It happens that it all starts with stains on the enamel - this is a symptom that not everything is in order. And you need to make a visit to the dentist before the crown of the tooth collapses.
Preventive actions
It is better to prevent any disease than to treat it. Therefore, in order to strengthen your teeth and prevent their fragility, you must follow these recommendations:
- Carefully and regularly care for your oral cavity using a properly selected toothbrush and toothpaste. Use dental floss, mouthwash, irrigator, and brush for hygiene procedures. Do not use a brush that is too hard, especially if you are prone to crumbling. After each meal, if possible, rinse your mouth with special solutions or at least water.
- Visit the dentist regularly: for adults - at least once every six months, for children - once every 3-4 months. This will allow diseases to be identified and eliminated in a timely manner. Periodic professional teeth cleaning will make it possible to get rid of plaque and tartar, which become a favorable environment for the development of pathogenic microflora.
- Massage the gums to improve metabolism in dental tissues. It is useful to strengthen the gums by rinsing the mouth with infusions of herbs (sage, oak bark).
- Do not follow the rules of a strict diet without consulting a nutritionist.
- Eliminate bad habits (biting seeds, pistachios, nails, etc.), do not smoke or drink alcohol.
- Keep your child's hands clean. Fruits and vegetables that are offered to him must be clean. It is imperative to maintain oral hygiene. You need to start caring for your teeth immediately after they erupt.
- Do not accustom your child to a pacifier. Otherwise, you should wean yourself off it as quickly as possible. It is also not recommended to feed your baby from a bottle with a nipple for a long time. It is important to ensure that the child does not fall asleep with it in his mouth. The remains of the sweet nutritional mixture provoke the development of so-called bottle caries, due to which the teeth turn black and crumble.
- Limit your consumption of sweets. The child must be introduced to complementary foods strictly according to the rules. You should consult your pediatrician on this issue.
For children, fissure sealing can be performed as a preventive measure. Often, caries develops in the grooves present on the surface of the chewing teeth. They are difficult to clean. In order to prevent caries, the doctor seals the cavities with a special material containing fluoride, therefore at the same time mineralizing the dental tissues.
Reasons why teeth may crumble
The answer to the question of why teeth crumble in an adult or child can be not only in the field of dentistry, but also much deeper, and everything is reflected in the condition of the dentition.
Causes:
- poor
oral hygiene. And no matter how they say that everyone always talks about the importance of the procedure, it is so. An acidic environment has a destructive effect on enamel, making it fragile and vulnerable. Increased acidity is affected by plaque on the teeth, which is where bacteria and their waste products—destructive acid—accumulate; - untreated caries
and other diseases, when there is a lot of carious tissue and the walls of the tooth become thinner. As a result, the tooth began to crumble; - mechanical causes
: trauma, super-hard food - nuts, chewing candy, etc., bad habits - chewing pencils, objects, opening a bottle with your teeth. As a result, the tooth cracked and broke; - changes in
food temperature. Very hot suddenly gives way to cold. The enamel does not withstand, cracks appear; - lack of vitamins
and minerals: calcium, vitamin D (which promotes the absorption of calcium), fluorine, phosphorus; - metabolic disease
. It is worth visiting an endocrinologist; - hormonal imbalance
. These are not only diseases associated with hormonal levels and fluctuations, but also special periods in a person’s life - adolescence and old age, menopause, pregnancy; - heredity
. Genetic predisposition to weak enamel; - stress
; - malocclusion
- uneven load on the lower and upper teeth; - Bruxism
is involuntary grinding of teeth during the day or at night.
Video from our expert about how and why teeth decay:
Teeth quickly decay due to chronic diseases, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract and endocrine glands. And crumbling teeth is a signal that needs to be responded to urgently.
What to do to strengthen enamel
Once the cause of the disease is determined, the doctor prescribes treatment. If the cause of tooth decay is untreated caries or mechanical damage, then the issue can be solved with the help of prosthetics. If the problem is a lack of vitamins or changes in hormonal levels, then specialized specialists will be involved in the treatment process.
Teeth began to crumble during pregnancy
For the development of the fetus, calcium is necessary, which the child receives from the body of the expectant mother. A woman experiences a deficiency if she does not eat well and does not take it additionally in the form of supplements or mineral complexes. Teeth may be destroyed, which occurs quite often in this “interesting position.”
The next factor influencing the weakness of dental tissue may be a hormonal surge during pregnancy and the nervousness of the mother.
Necessary:
- take care of a sufficient supply of calcium
in the body, because it also affects the development of the skeletal system (including the rudiments of teeth) of the unborn child. Eat a balanced diet, if necessary, take active supplements with calcium and vitamin D prescribed by your doctor; - don’t be nervous,
and walk more - be observed
during pregnancy by a gynecologist, dentist, or other doctors, if indicated.
Teeth can crumble not only during pregnancy, but also during lactation. With mother's milk, calcium is transferred to the baby.
Symptoms of tooth decay
Of course, when a tooth begins to clearly crumble, you can see it immediately or feel it with your tongue. However, it is possible to “catch” the moment when crumbling has not yet occurred, but all the symptoms indicate the imminent onset of this unpleasant process. If the patient begins to sound the alarm in time and turns to the dentist for help, the final destruction and loss of the tooth can be avoided. So, the following symptoms may indicate impending tooth decay:
- Tooth enamel turns yellow;
- Small cracks appear on the teeth;
- The tooth becomes extremely sensitive to cold and hot food;
- The appearance of immediate chips of the tooth;
- At a late stage, bone tissue rots, which is accompanied by bad breath.
If you notice that your teeth are about to “crumble” or are already actively doing so, immediately visit the dentist; the sooner you do this, the greater the likelihood that the doctor will save the tooth.
There are often patients who wait until the last minute and apply only when the doctor can only remove the tooth painlessly; this is very irresponsible. A decayed tooth is unable to perform its main function - thoroughly grinding food before it goes into the esophagus and then into the stomach. Too large pieces of food can cause indigestion and multiple problems in the digestive system.
How to get rid of the problem, solution methods
The dentist will decide how to stop tooth decay after identifying the cause. If treatment by other doctors is necessary, then in parallel it is already possible to begin the restoration of dental units.
Dental restoration methods:
- filling.
Installing a filling in place of the missing piece of tissue. If the carious cavity is large enough and the walls are fragile, then an inlay with a composite material may be indicated; - veneers.
If there is a chip or crack in the front teeth of the frontal area, a thin ceramic overlay will correct the situation, hiding all the defects; - crowns
When the crown of a tooth is severely damaged, the doctor may recommend installing an artificial one from the selected material. Most often these are metal ceramics, ceramics, zirconium dioxide. It is important what condition the gums are in; - remineralization.
Restoring the normal balance of vitamins in the enamel structure. A special composition is applied to the surface of the teeth for several minutes. The tissue is saturated, enriched with calcium, fluoride, becomes stronger and can even remove caries at the chalk spot stage; - fluoridation.
Fluoride-containing pastes nourish the enamel. Fluorine is responsible for crystalline calcium compounds. Fluoride varnish seals dentinal tubules, strengthening teeth; - taking active
calcium and vitamin D
The ecological situation of the region of residence is one of the causes of dental health pathologies. The quality of air, water and food is far from ideal. Replenish the deficiency with complex supplements, spend your weekends in nature. Love organic farm products.
Incorrectly restored tooth
- Poor performance of the filling , violation of technology and methodology during restoration (we will not dwell on this).
- The type of restoration is inadequately selected, in a word, “too big a filling” (i.e. they put a filling in cases where it can no longer be placed, but there are all the indications for “more serious” ceramic restorations (inlays, crowns).
I would like to dwell on the second reason in more detail.
Competent dentists know that there is an index of tooth surface destruction (DSI), which must be taken into account before restoring teeth in order to do it correctly. For you, dear patient, I will describe it in a simplified way. If the tooth is not severely damaged (conditionally up to 40% of the surface), a filling is an excellent way to restore it. Destruction of 40 to 70% of the surface requires the manufacture of a ceramic inlay or strengthening of the tooth with various pin structures.
If there is a significant degree of destruction of the tooth surface (more than 70%), the tooth should be correctly restored with a crown. In a word, the type of tooth restoration depends on the degree of destruction.
What's wrong with a filling?
Each recovery method has its own indications. So, a filling is necessary and can be placed in cases of small and medium degrees of tooth decay. If the decay is significant, a large filling can split the tooth in half.
Let's find out why!
Any material (even metal) expands when heated (remember the temperature of the tea you drink!). Temperature changes are a fairly common occurrence that our teeth encounter (from hot tea to ice cream). The coefficient of thermal expansion of filling materials is still higher than that of tooth tissue. That is, when hot food is consumed, the filling expands more than the tooth tissue that surrounds it. The larger the volume of the filling, the greater the expansion (this is why a large volume of the filling is so undesirable).
Of course, this expansion is minimal, not noticeable to any eye and not perceptible. However, add to it a chewing load (which far exceeds temperature deformations), a large filling, thinned tooth tissue, and the likelihood of chipping increases many times over.
Unlike filling materials, ceramics (from which crowns and inlays are made) have a closer coefficient of thermal expansion to the tooth tissues, and therefore do not contribute to its chipping. In addition, it is stronger. That is why it is correct to restore severely damaged teeth not with fillings, but with ceramic restorations. There are other physical phenomena that affect the change in the size of the filling and, as a result, the splitting of the tooth.
All of the above, of course, is true only with an adequately completed restoration (even fillings, even crowns). An inaccurate hand of a master can lead to chipping even with ceramic restorations, and on the contrary, a skillful hand can place a large filling so that it will last a long time. However, there is a limit to everything and it is better not to go beyond the indications for restorations if you want to get guaranteed and reliable work.
Conclusion : you should not expand the indications for conventional fillings too much; they are not capable of qualitatively restoring a badly damaged tooth. But in case of minor tooth decay, fillings have proven themselves to be excellent!
Let me give you a photographic example.
The patient complained that it was painful for her to bite on one of her teeth, that something “crunched” in it.
Upon examination, we determined: tooth 4 on the upper jaw: it has a medium-sized filling (at first glance). And a movable, broken tooth wall, which is held together only by the gums. This wall is no longer attached to the tooth.
The broken fragment of the tooth is mobile, easily moved to the side, but has not yet been removed.
View of the tooth after removing the broken wall: the cheek wall was chipped under the gum. A large filling and a thin remaining tooth wall on the palatal side are visible. Some doctors may try to restore such a tooth using a crown (with preliminary extension); some doctors will offer a perhaps more predictable option: removal and subsequent implantation.
Why are teeth restored incorrectly?
It’s absurd, but often the dentist follows the patient’s lead. The patient, not fully understanding all the subtleties and features of the distribution of the load when chewing, refuses the inlay or crown and asks the doctor to “put a filling”, they say, I’ll work with it a little more, and only then the crown! As a result, at the most inopportune moment, a “piece” of the tooth breaks off. As a result, such “pity” of the doctor for the patient turns out to be a bigger problem for the patient than timely adequate tooth restoration.
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How to properly restore teeth?
When treating a tooth, the doctor must remove all carious tissues, old fillings, movable walls, if any, completely clean the tooth and only then assess the degree of destruction (which walls and cusps have survived, whether they are able to bear the load, how the load on this tooth will be distributed during different methods of restoration, whether chips of any wall are possible, whether its restoration will lead to a split of the root, etc.). After such an assessment, it is determined how to properly restore the tooth: is it possible to put a filling, or does it need to be “strengthened with a pin,” or would it be more correct to use a ceramic inlay or a crown.
Conclusion: a properly selected restoration will preserve the tooth for many years, protect it from further destruction, and the patient from having to redo the work in a few years.
What to do if the tooth is completely crumbled
The crown part of the tooth has completely crumbled, what should I do? You must make an appointment with a doctor at a dental clinic within two days. After the x-ray, it will be clear whether the root is preserved, what condition it is in, and whether removal is necessary. Then possible recovery options:
- prosthetics (stump inlays, pins, crowns and bridges);
- implantation (implantation of a titanium artificial root into bone tissue followed by installation of a crown).
In any case, modern techniques are sufficient to compensate for any loss of teeth.
