How to Dramatically Reduce Your Stress When Visiting the Dentist

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When we are young children, we find that we have a lot of fears. We’ll tell our parents we think there are monsters under the bed, and can only go to sleep after they’ve checked and assured us they are not there. Sometimes we wake up with nightmares, and can only get comfort if we wake up our parents and they tell us we are safe. We also have things that can cause pain in life, like when we fall when we are running and skin our knees.

Another common cause of fear may come from our earliest visits to the dentist. As a young child, having to hold still for quite a while and having a dentist drill into a tooth with a cavity can be quite unnerving. Even for adults the sound of the drill and the feeling of a tooth being drilled is quite intense. It’s not difficult to imagine how that experience is even further magnified when you are just a child. So it’s no wonder that, as adults, many of us still have a fear of going to the dentist.

Reduce Your Fear With Sedation Dentistry

If you have fear or anxiety about going to the dentist and getting dental procedures done, then you are far more likely to avoid going in for appointments at all. This can leave you vulnerable to oral health issues, potential loss of teeth and gum disease. It’s serious if you leave gum disease untreated, because the bacteria can actually cross over into your bloodstream and adversely affect your heart.

When you go to a sedation dentist, your anxiety and fears will be eased because you will be sedated while any necessary dental work is done. The dental procedures will be pain-free and you’ll be able to once again take care of your oral health.

What’s Involved with Sedation Dentistry

During a visit to a dentist who offers sedation, you’ll likely find that they administer Oral Conscious Sedation (“OCS”). OCS provides an effective means to greatly reduce any fear and anxiety associated with visits to the dentist or dental procedures. You’ll want to choose a dentist that is licensed for OCS, and has significant experience using this therapy.

No IV drugs are necessary. To start the sedation a crushed pill is simply placed under the tongue, where it dissolves. Triazolam, whose brand name is Halcion, is the most likely medication. There are over half a million documented cases of safe use of this in dental settings.

The Benefits of OCS

There are multiple benefits when patients are treated with Oral Conscious Sedation. Because patients are totally relaxed under OCS, multiple procedures can be done during a single visit with no issues at all. This further helps reduce the anxiety that would have been associated with having to come back to the dentist for multiple visits.

With the sedation process, the patient experiences a form of anterograde amnesia. Rather than the pain that might have been felt from a regular dental visit, in this case the experience is totally pain free. Because the individual is sedated, the mind can’t form any negative memories associated with the dental procedures. This in turn reduces the association of dental visits being something that one should fear.