There has been a paradigm shift in dentistry in recent years. A new attitude towards the dentist has emerged, with patients having less fear of treatment and becoming more receptive and excited about doing work that will result in a more aesthetically pleasing smile. Over the twenty-three years as a dentist I have noticed that more people visit for treatment not because they had to but because they wanted to.

People want their teeth whiter, straighter and more beautiful and they want it done quickly.And why not?
A smile and a handshake start every business meeting, every job interview, and leave a lasting impression on a first date. It takes 26 facial muscles to smile and 60 to frown. (I could have named most of them 2 decades ago, but cannot do so now – guess I am getting too old for that.) Anyway, with each passing day, more and more patients are able to recognise how the transformation of a smile can change a life.
There are three procedures which can immediately improve your smile. First there is bonding which uses composite resin to restore chipped or broken teeth, fill in gaps, fix cavities and reshape or recolour your smile. The same material used for bonding is used for making tooth coloured fillings, which appear more natural. Your dentist applies the resin and sculpts, colours and shapes it to provide a pleasing result. A special light, operating at a specific wavelength, hardens the material, which is then adjusted and polished. Bonding differs from veneers in that bonding can be done within a single visit, while veneers require a dental lab to manufacture the restoration. In addition, bonding is much cheaper.
Then there is colour enhancement. There are many factors that can affect the colour and appearance of your teeth. There are some persons who are just born with teeth that are naturally more yellow than others due to their genetic makeup. Teeth also become more yellow and grey with age. This occurs because over many years the enamel (the hard, white outer layer of a tooth) starts to wear down, becoming more transparent, allowing the yellow colour of the underlying layer of tooth structure (dentin) to show through. Incidentally, this can happen pre-maturely in people who brush their teeth unnecessarily too often.
Extrinsic stains are the stains that appear on the surface of the teeth as a result of years of consuming black coffee, tea, red wine, fruit punch, tomato sauce, highly pigmented foods such as curry and pepperpot, and of course, tobacco. Do not forget that enamel is porous. The accumulation of tartar (from plaque that hardened) will also cause teeth to appear discoloured. Superficial extrinsic stains can be readily removed by brushing, flossing and dental cleanings. Deeper stains will need to be bleached out. Meanwhile, intrinsic stains come from the discolouration of the actual tooth.
If someone was given the antibiotic tetracycline during the time the teeth were forming, chances are they would develop a dark yellowish, brownish banding around the teeth. Excessive ingestion of fluoride can result in fluorosis, which is evident from the white spots that develop on the teeth. Additionally, tooth trauma can result in a colour change to the tooth, due to internal bleeding and nerve damage.
Finally, your smile makeover can involve enamel reshaping. This is simply the reshaping and contouring of the enamel (outer layer) of the teeth to remove sharp edges and uneven characteristics of the teeth, and to give the illusion that the teeth are straighter than they really are. This reshaping of the tooth’s enamel lends to an improvement of the overall appearance of a smile, correcting the flaws that catch one’s eye, such as a tooth that is longer than the others, or an obvious overlapping or rotation of the teeth due to crowding.
While many people may be able to benefit from some degree of enamel reshaping, careful case selection is necessary to determine if this procedure is viable for the patient. Many times, enamel reshaping is indicated for those people who want to soften the vampire-like points of their canines, or soften and round off sharp, pointy edges, or shorten teeth that appear too long. It is not recommended for persons who intend to put on braces in the future.
Enamel reshaping is a very conservative and simple cosmetic procedure, but does remove some of your tooth’s enamel, which cannot be replaced. In many respects, enamel reshaping, when combined with teeth whitening and conservative bonding, can be the fastest, least invasive, and least expensive way to have a smile makeover. This is the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth.