Is It Your Turn Yet?
March 2009
Treating “Teacher Syndrome”
I know it’s not only teachers - it is almost all of us babyboomers, but I have coined a term that I talk about to patients and Hillary (Dr. Caruso) called “Teacher Syndrome”. I call it that because the first big group of recent retirees that has come through our practice, in their early 60’s, has been teachers. Faithfully, they have been coming for their regular hygiene visits, have eliminated most sugars from their snack diets, have faithfully cleaned their teeth (and between their teeth). Now, in their early to mid 60’s with 30 or more years of chewing left to do, they have a mouth full of big fillings to maintain for those extra years. Many of these teachers have not had the benefit of dental insurance, but have maintained well, their old fillings and hopefully, have had crowns placed on some of those old fillings.
Now comes the “Syndrome”. The good life of retirement…not having to get up in the morning, not having to race to school, not having to look forward to school vacation to be able to take a small trip, BUT also having a much more fixed income that makes fractured fillings, root canals and recommended crowns much more financially painful. It IS a challenge for Hillary and I as our philosophy is that we strive for our patients to have the ability to chew all of their life with their natural teeth, even in their rocking chair at age 100.
So how do we deal with this syndrome? Hopefully, during the last few years of increased income and kids out of college, we prioritize having reinforced crowns that will carry that tooth through the next 30 or more years with comfort and function at a low cost.
If that wasn’t accomplished and you have the large filling with a portion of the tooth breaking off, we can make the choice of whether to place the crown or repair it with our new technology bonding materials which allows us to do some amazing treatment such as simply repairing a tooth and having it, hopefully, last many years.
The one situation I dread most is the tooth that requires a root canal or, even worse, a tooth that splits and cannot have a restorative filling and needs to be removed. There are options for that now - the best being implants. Implants are easy, relatively comfortable and painless to place, but with a larger price tag.
So, to summarize our plan:
Let’s get our good snack habits in order starting now - eliminate frequent sugars, no grazing on cookies, no sucking on mints when we have a dry mouth in the winter. Keep up with preventive dental visits, clean between our teeth, and just do everything we can to stay healthy. By taking care of it now and carrying it through retirement years, we can, hopefully, look forward to sitting in our rocking chairs and eating whatever we want with our natural teeth.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Article written by: Dr. Daniel L. Steinke
