Vol. 80 - The Dental Edit + Mouth Mapping

Was it inevitable? Longevity has come for the mouth.

Before we get there, a moment for the basics: There is no hygiene habit that is more reinforced than brushing twice a day.

When a beauty brand is trying to form (force?) a new routine, everything from using an eye serum to an at-home laser, the tooth comparison is invoked again and again.

It goes something like this: If you just spend X minutes a week doing X NEW THING, with the same consistency as you brush your teeth, then X (insert dream solution here). I’ve heard it for facial sculpting devices, electrolyte powders, dry brushing, the list goes on…

But with teeth, the habit has already been formed. So it’s surprising that it’s taken this long to overhaul the product category. It’s getting harder and harder to identify true whitespaces in beauty. Could this be the final frontier?

The drugstore has long been the go-to for all things oral health (Arm & Hammer Baking Soda Toothpaste forevah), but like every other category, it has been lux-ified and clean-ified, from products that could easily be confused for skincare, and formulas that have been stripped of artificial colors, flavors, and overly foamy textures.

I’m interested in testing the drops but as for what I actually use day in and day out:

The dentist’s office has also gotten a makeover. Maybe you would like to know if your gums are receding or what your saliva has to share? If so, Smile House by Dr. Jonathan B. Levine in TriBeCa has something to meet the moment: Mouth Mapping.

I got my mouth “mapped” a few months ago, an experience that initially felt more like entering a hotel lounge than a dental office. That is, until I stood for a 360 degree head scan and got to see a picture of my skull for the first time.

In addition to medical and aesthetic dental care (minus root canals), Smile House patients can choose to receive a detailed picture of what’s really going on behind the lips. “The goal is to help people understand how their mouth and smile impact their long term overall health,” says Cody Levine, who is Dr. Levine’s son. (The entire family, plus star patient Lenny Kravitz, started the non-profit Glo Good Foundation. Cody, his brother Julian, and Kravitz are also behind the dental brand Twice.)

The marquee Mouth Mapping appointment includes the following diagnostic pillars:

1. Aesthetic - An evaluation of tooth position and symmetry

2. Structure - 3-D imaging to examine bone health, alignment and size of the airway

3. Function - A heat map of your mouth shows your bite, plus potential grinding patterns and clenching pressure

4. Biology - Oral cancer screening and a saliva test to determine risk profiles for several heart and brain conditions

The diagnostics determined that I have been living in a dental desert, due to low salivary pH and glucose, and poor nitric oxide levels. The fix: Twice daily swishes of the Twice Immunity Rinse meant to help increase saliva production.

In addition to that, and learning I need to raise my tongue posture to the roof of my mouth to keep airways open and avoid muscle stress, the most valuable piece of information I got came not from the data but the practicalities:

I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know how to properly use an electric toothbrush. Apparently it’s all about the slide (electric slide!). I was instructed to glide the electric toothbrush slowly at a 45 degree angle along the gum line instead of brushing in circles, which can aggravate the gums and lead to recession, something I was definitely guilty of doing to excess.

There is more to say about the absolute onslaught of information we are being given with all of these diagnostic tools, but I do appreciate that the treatment creates a plan that can be enacted in the same space.

We spend so much time focused on what we can see—skin, teeth, etc. But I predict aesthetic treatments of the future, dental and otherwise, will seek to manipulate or build up the bone. Until then…

Happy Weekend!

X

Jamie