My dental journey of 2026

[Kennethk]

Thought I'd blog for an interesting read. I've had massive amounts of dental done this year. 5 upper incisors crowned, two implants crowned, a bridge replaced after a mishap with a bad dental clean. As someone that spent many of my late 20s ignoring my dental problems I finally put my foot down and decided it was time to take action. Insurance helped but lightly due to low income living it was a requirement. If you find a good office they will be willing to work with you on payments. Although crowns are not invincible as some would assume they are much better options than brittle decayed teeth. Just got my bridge fixed today and all I have left is 24/25 to take of. Unsure what to do about color matching dentists says it's aesthetic I somewhat disagree on my lower incisors.

Still a proud accomplishment to be able to put money aside and pay what I can to get my teeth back after decades of neglect.

 

[MattKW]

Good for you. Choosing appropriate colours can be very difficult because natural teeth darken as you get older so what might've been a nice match to other teeth at 25 yo will stand out at 50 yo. And then the types of crowns will give different translucencies: eMax is most aesthetic, zirconia next, and PFM last. Your molars look like zirconia (bland colour, not translucent but who'll ever see them?) and the lower incisors look more like PFMs. The answer is that we can't always give back as well as natural teeth because there are other factors to consider such as strength and cost. As a dentist I had a gold crown placed a few years ago on a molar because it has lots of good material properties except for the colour; I expect it to outlast any other type of crown just mentioned.

 

[Kennethk]

Good for you. Choosing appropriate colours can be very difficult because natural teeth darken as you get older so what might've been a nice match to other teeth at 25 yo will stand out at 50 yo. And then the types of crowns will give different translucencies: eMax is most aesthetic, zirconia next, and PFM last. Your molars look like zirconia (bland colour, not translucent but who'll ever see them?) and the lower incisors look more like PFMs. The answer is that we can't always give back as well as natural teeth because there are other factors to consider such as strength and cost. As a dentist I had a gold crown placed a few years ago on a molar because it has lots of good material properties except for the colour; I expect it to outlast any other type of crown just mentioned.

I do plan to get the from two retreated over that rerct. Since they are 15+ years old crazy they lasted that long. They are PFM. Which I've also had a pfm bridge fail hence the implant choice. I've decided full zirconia for strength I'll have to ask my office about eMax for the bottom two because they have CEREC but like previous topics I don't think it's a good idea to have two different materials grinding on each other. My office uses full ceramic they could possibly lab a gold crown if I ever need it on my first right bottom molar. Hear it's more expensive but also seen videos of them lasting 30+ years. Dental is expensive I'm making $400 a month payments which I'm almost done. But I'm about to be 35 and making it priority while I have the chance in my younger days. I'd just be buying useless electronics otherwise which I already did in my 20s lol.

With age you start thinking about making life purchases instead of meaningless things that all do the same thing.

 

[Kennethk]

Well just got my bottom two temps on and they honestly look pretty good for temps. Maybe because Mola temps are alot more fragile I had a tougher time with them. But as long as I cut up my food and not put massive pressure on the I should be fine. Molars are most important in the mouth imo.