DISTRACTION = MORE COMFORT

If you have noticed my hand shaking whenever I give you an injection, it's time that we let you in on the secret. No, I am not a nervous person. The jiggling of you lip or jaw is one of many techniques that we use at our office make you more comfortable while local anesthesia is being administered.Usually your focus can be on only one thing at a time...so when you are thinking about why your lip is being jiggled, your attention is drawn away from the injection site. Also, the stimulation you feel in your lip makes it hard for you to distinguish the initial pinch of the injection. The same situation occurs when I press on the roof of your mouth or ask you to close your mouth tightly or stretch your mouth as wide as possible.Our success in such methods of distraction is confirmed every time a patient says, "You know, Doctor, I didn't feel a thing!"
Golf balls, trees, and root canals
What could these three things possibly have in common? The answer is gutta percha, a naturally occurring material from trees found in Malaysia and a close relative of natural rubber and chicle (used to make chewing gum).Since it was first discovered in the mid-seventeenth century, gutta percha has found many uses, including (perhaps best known) in golf balls and dentistry. Gutta perchas golf balls, or gutties as they were known, were used until about 1920, while dentists continue to use gutta percha today, as they have for over 100 years.This natural latex has many interesting properties that make it an ideal material to fill the root canals or teeth. It is a rubbery solid at room temperature but melts when heated. When used with cement, it can be compacted tightly into a root canal to form a water tight seal. And it can be readily detected on dental x-rays.Though other materials have found their way into modern golf balls, gutta percha is still the most commonly used and successful material for filling root canals.