Introduction

This website is for people who wish to look after their teeth and keep them for life.

It is written by a general dental practitioner in South East London with over 40 years’ experience.

It is not DIY dentistry nor is it ‘Things you can have done to your teeth’.

It is hopefully an informative, practical, pragmatic manual for people who have teeth and wish to keep them. It is a text book for the patient.

I am assisted in writing it by my lovely patients.

I have learnt so much from them over the years about how to say things, how not to say things, how to explain.

I have learnt as much from the patients I have inadvertently upset as the ones I have pleased and I thank them all, not to mention my wonderful staff.

Two people who deserve a mention are Lily for setting me up, Malcolm for tuition and especially Pippa for giving up hours of her time to help me with the technology. My computer skills and draftsman ship are very rudimentary but will hopefully improve as I go along.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES.

You aim to keep your teeth for life.

Therefore you have two objectives-

1- To learn all you can about their health and welfare, and

2- To teach yourself how to care for them properly.

This website and your dental team are here to help you, IF YOU WISH.

I have tried to write it in a logical order, in small sections/chapters, as it takes all of us, however intelligent we are, time to absorb information that is new and unfamiliar and even longer to incorporate actions into our daily routines.

I have tried to make it scientific enough to make sense but not so ‘sciency’ that it won’t make sense to those without a science background.

Although it can be read from ‘cover to cover’ each section is designed to be ‘stand-alone’ which makes it, by its very nature repetitious.

It is written as a blog as I don’t know how else to do it. Hopefully in the future someone will help me turn it into a ‘website’. As its written in blog form, chapter 1 is the first post and the chapter for kids is the last post, number 30, which might seem illogical but I have written it like that so if a child visits, the chapter pertinent to them is the first one that appears on the screen.

If you go to the table of contents on the menu, find the chapter you want, click on the link it will take you straight there.

Good dentistry is about teaching the patient how to care for their own teeth and while occasionally people have accidents or old restorations fail and need attending to by a member of the profession what happens in your bathroom and your kitchen is far more important.

I hope anyone who reads it finds it useful.

CAS 2020. GDC no 54336.

NB. Please read Mum as meaning Dad or Carer as well and she to also mean he.