People need beauty; we need to feel we are attractive. Looking good makes us healthier. And since our faces are what people see, it’s natural that most of our efforts are concentrated there. Women have used makeup from the time they first saw their reflections; and changing styles in hair length and beards through the ages indicate men’s consciousness of how they look.
What is most important about a face? Eyes? They may mirror the soul, but experts have shown that it is the mouth that is the face’s most prominent feature. The mouth is the first focus of attention and the decisive factor when others form an opinion about how you look.
How often have you seen a person covering their mouth with a hand when they laugh or pulling their their tightly over their teeth when smiling? Maybe you know someone who tries to hide a space between the teeth with their tongue. These people are creating illusions to cover up faults they know are there.
Most of us know that help is available; unfortunately, it’s assumed that the help is for the celebrated, with their white even teeth, who can afford to expend the time and money to improve their appearances.
But as you read on, you’ll find that it’s not necessarily expensive or just for that special handful of stars; it’s available for you and for everyone. It is a new concept in dentistry, a practical way to create illusions to improve your appearance, a way of using the tools of the profession to enhance a person’s smile and facial characteristics—aesthetic dentistry.
Aesthetic dentistry can improve appearances, and the aesthetically inclined dentist works to give beauty where it was lacking or lost. The work is often painstakingly slow. The aesthetically inclined dentist spends much time on such details as carving and staining porcelain crowns, repeated try-ins of dentures and fixed bridges, bonding over teeth to reshape them and close spaces, bleaching both “live” and “dead” teeth. Aesthetic dentists use many of the materials and techniques with improvisations of their own to help create illusions. But there is no mystery to what they do, only a significant time commitment and a new way of approaching dentistry, a twofold approach that combines the old (the improvement of dental health) and the new (aesthetic improvement). The rewards of aesthetic dentistry are perhaps the most dramatic in the profession. The results are there: a beautiful smile, a new confidence, and a more youthful appearance.
