Teeth care is something that British people aren’t well known for but in recent times it has started to improve. Taking the lead from the USA we have started to adopt some of their oral care techniques like teeth whitening as well as implementing practice branded dental plans.
The teeth of the British people have never really been bad teeth, we have just always been more focused on the health of our teeth rather than how the teeth look. That said a number of my friends have fillings and for those of the older generation this seems to be a more common problem. Some when during the 1970’s or maybe as late as the 80’s attitudes to British teeth changed, as more and more children who had gaps in their teeth or large overbites were given braces.
Having had a bit of an overbite when I was a child I was taken to the dental practice and measured up for some fixed braces or ‘train tracks’, as they were known at school. The process wasn’t that traumatic, I had to have a mold of my teeth made up and then had the brace attached, which took a while as I was having the fixtures cemented onto my teeth. Then after this the wires were fixed and tightened. This was probably the worst part of the process as I was left with a constant pulling feeling on my teeth, which left a dull ache for the first couple of days. This initial aching calmed down after a day or so and then I just had to learn to cope with my braces with regards to eating and drinking.
My teeth are now fixed and I’m glad I had braces for that year or so as I can imagine they could have caused a few problems throughout my later life. Now a days British teeth have developed their oral hygiene. Teeth whitening has become the latest craze with everything from Crest Whitestrips to laser teeth whiting being used at the dental practice and at home. Another improvement for British teeth is the use of dental plans by dentist practices. These allow practices to have their own practice branded dental plans that allow non NHS dentists to offer their services to what would traditionally be NHS patients at an affordable rate.
Tags: dental plans