Gum Disease
To most people that means what kind of teeth would you like?
So if you ask people to describe the teeth they would ideally like – what are common answers? In my experience:[/intro-text]
- 90% of the time the answers are: really straight, very white, perfect teeth
- 10% of the time the answers are: straighter, whiter but not too white, I want them to look natural.
So, the average, even experienced dentist doesn’t know really what to make out of answers like that.
A London dentist is likely to try really hard to satisfy the patient’s perceived requirements, so often that patient gets dead straight, super white teeth. The trouble is that most patients simply don’t really know what they want.
Many, particularly the more middle-aged, that may well have experienced a great variety of different dentists approaches. All they know is that they aren’t really happy with their smiles. So as often as not, they simply think the solution is in getting simply whiter teeth.
Now that really is all wrong. When ‘push comes to shove’, what most people want are beautiful teeth that give them a lovely, attractive and ‘youthful’ smile.
The problem is what defines a beautiful, attractive, youthful smile?
The answer is, in my personal view, as follows:
Firstly let’s accept that the first thing anyone will notice about you is your smile and that also means your teeth. The only ‘competition’ are the eyes. After that everything else follows way behind the hair, the skin, the figure, legs etc. Why? Because we communicate primarily with our mouths and eyes!
When I talk to you, you look at my mouth, because that what moves and ‘communicates’. While I am talking, I look at your eyes … to make sure you are looking at me and if not, you probably are not listening to me. When you respond, my gaze will shift from your eyes to your mouth (and you will then be looking at my eyes).
If you are a woman wearing lipstick, what does that do? It focuses attention on your mouth by framing the teeth. If you cover your teeth when you talk, smile or laugh, what does that mean? It almost always means that you are hiding your teeth, obviously. But subconsciously it sends out a message that you are hiding something. What are you not being ‘ open’ about?
So what are beautiful teeth?
Teeth that never need to be ‘hidden’; that you can be really happy and so proud of that you want to smile openly and warmly? One doesn’t have to go any further than looking at nature. We can’t improve on that. But we do need to recognise it. Real beauty needs to represent harmony, proportion, health and fitness and needs to be relative to age.
- A gap between front teeth in an eight-year-old old make not look quite as appealing in a thirty year old .
- The same shade of very white teeth in a sixteen year old are going to look a bit ridiculous in a sixty year old.
- Dead straight with all the biting edges at the same level are going to look very ageing on a thirty year old.
- Teeth that are all exactly the same shade of colour with no variation are simply going to look false (because they will be).
- What else looks wrong? Square-shaped teeth in a narrow, pear-shaped face; short teeth in a tall person: rounded feminine shaped teeth on a big strong alpha male! And the list goes on…
A fantastic compliment anyone can receive, either said or thought is ‘ what a lovely, beautiful, open, warm smile you have and you are so lucky to have such naturally beautiful teeth’. The implication being, of course, you didn’t need to go to a dentist to get that!
