What We're Following Today December 6, 2019

Today I’m in my favorite place...the dentist office. Another day to hopefully get through without a cavity but be reminded of how I don’t do enough on a day to day basis. I hope my kids do better than me...ugh. But because I’m here I decided to look up conning healthcare problems by age ranges. The search led me to the ADA (American Dental Association) which has put some convenient summaries together.

60+.

Did you know Medicare doesn’t cover routine dental visits? I didn’t. So it something to consider along with other common conditions like dry mouth (which can lead to more cavities, etc.).

https://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/adults-over-60/concerns

40-60.

Gum disease, dry mouth, sensitive teeth and missing teeth all made the list in this age group. So if you’re missing teeth, consider getting that gap filled to help with speech, eating and more :)

I didn’t see anything specific for younger ages but assume things like cavities and gum disease would still appear at the top.

Here’s the kicker, you could ask almost any American what they should do in order to improve their dental health and almost everyone would say, brush, floss, don’t smoke or chew tobacco, and eat better. Yet we don’t do it...and if we did that we could save a LOT of money on bigger ticket items like implants, gum surgeries, etc.

Here’s another article about the most common dental problems: https://www.verywellhealth.com/top-common-dental-problems-1059461

Basically, we all know what we have to do and the earlier we start the better. I will work on improving my habits as I’d have to look back and think how much I have spent on preventative or curative dental treatments (braces aside). It probably has been close to $30,000 - $40,000 when thinking about all the cleanings, xrays, cavity fillings and 3 crowns and one root canal...

Is an extra 5 minutes a day worth that? At 43 years old that 5 minutes would equate to nearly 32 work weeks of time...and preventative stuff would still be included (so we’re probably talking about $20,000 - $25,000 in curative costs. But even at that, this money isn’t chump change in exchange for creating a healthy habit...