Tooth Colored Fillings
At Hillock Family Dentistry, we offer the most advanced dental equipment and technologies, including single visit whitening treatments. If you are planning to attend a special event and want to look your best, or just want to have a brilliant, movie-star smile, we offer Zoom!
Whitening – the gold standard for in-office teeth whitening. We love to see you smile!
Schedule with us today for the most effective form of teeth whitening in Modesto.
Fillings At Hillock Family Dentistry
Even if you brush, floss, avoid food that can lead to tooth decay and follow all other instructions from your dentist it’s still possible you could end up with a cavity. Fortunately, metal dental amalgam is not your only choice. In fact, many patients come to us to have all metal fillings replaced with porcelain. The tooth now appears perfect – the filling is completely invisible.
Dr. Donald Hillock, our family dentist in Modesto, can help you have tooth-colored fillings. These fillings have cosmetic benefits and can help you feel confident that your fillings are made from a very healthy material that will not interact with the body.
The Benefits Of Tooth-colored Fillings
The material used for tooth-colored fillings is composed of plastic resins and silica fillers. If this composite is used to fill a cavity, the surface of the tooth that is treated will look completely natural – perfectly matching the rest of your teeth.
That’s far from the only benefit, however.
- These fillings can actually help strengthen teeth.
- Composite fillings resist wear.
- They can be used on front teeth as well as back teeth.
- They can withstand chewing pressure.
Tooth-Colored Fillings Can Help You Keep Your Teeth Strong
If a cavity is being treated, the first step is to remove the decayed portion of the tooth. The next step is filling or restoring the tooth. When traditional dental amalgam (metal) fillings are used, it is necessary to remove some healthy tooth to help ensure that the amalgam is held in place. This can weaken the structure of the tooth and potentially make it more likely to crack in the future.
Composite, tooth-colored fillings bind directly to the tooth. Healthy portions of the tooth are left untouched and no additional damage is done to your natural tooth structure. The tooth is left stronger and the restoration can be expected to last longer.>
A Note About Mercury
Dental amalgam is made up of mercury, silver, tin and copper. Mercury binds these materials together and makes up about 50 percent of amalgam. In recent years, concerns have been raised about the potential toxicity of mercury in dental amalgam. However, the research regarding this question that has been performed to date has not led to conclusive findings. Both the American Dental Association and the Food and Drug Administration consider the use of dental amalgam to be safe, and dentists who advise their patients to have amalgam fillings removed for health reasons could lose a license to practice.
The only point in mentioning these issues is to note that tooth-colored composites do not contain mercury. Even though the mainstream consensus is that the mercury in amalgam fillings does not present a health risk, this is a controversy that can is often brought up to us by parents and patients. In this case, you have an option to have tooth colored fillings.