Our cultural fascination with perfect smiles has been growing steadily for years, and social media has only accelerated the interest. For some, having a perfect white smile and shiny teeth seems like the equivalent of having the latest designer bags these days..
The first wave happened in the early 2000s, with adults in their forties and fifties getting veneers. Many of the makeover reality TV shows from that time, introduced veneers to a wider audience. Now, people as young as 18 are considering the procedure with the main reason is how they smile and look on Instagram.
What is a veneer?
A veneer is basically a cover that goes on the tooth, like an acrylic nail. If you’re just doing healthy teeth, you just have to take a thin layer off the tooth, a couple of millimetres, like a contact lens. Patients will typically wear temporary veneers once the teeth have been shaven until their permanent veneers come back from the lab, a process that can take a number of weeks to ensure everything is correct.
A higher per-tooth price for porcelain veneers is due to the amount of work that goes into making veneers look as realistic as possible, using the very best, highly-skilled technicians.
Sometimes people will go abroad because the price of porcelain veneers in the UK is beyond their budget. But are cheaper veneers from abroad a good idea?
Pros
- Less expensive
Cons
- Teeth may be filed down to pegs, taking of part of the protective enamel layer to make way for the veneers
- Foreign composite veneers, typically constructed and applied within a day, are made of a cheaper material than porcelain ones and may give a bulkier appearance
- There may be no guarantee for the work done or you must return to the country to repair/ address any issues
- Smile may end up worse than before
- Getting poorly done veneers can also lead to problems in the future like an uneven bite or loose teeth.
- May end up receiving crowns, not veneers
What are crowns?
Crowns are designed to protect weak teeth and require grinding down the majority of the real tooth — in this case, healthy teeth — to make way for it. Most commonly, crowns are administered after someone has had a root canal, but they are sometimes used in conjunction with veneers, depending on the kind of work a person’s mouth needs. Generally, the indication for doing a crown is, say, you cracked your tooth, you bit into something wrong, and half of or most of your tooth structure is gone. So the purpose of a crown is to protect the remaining portion of your teeth from cracking. The general population should not be getting a mouthful of crowns. They should only be reserved for people who need them in those other instances.
Many young people with seemingly healthy and aesthetic teeth are having their teeth shaved down to pegs, and are referring to these restorations as veneers. In the long run, getting crowns at such a young age could be detrimental to a person’s health, potentially putting them in the unfortunate position of needing dentures by the age of 40.
There’s been a steady move toward a universal straight, white smile for quite some time now. Around 600,000 people had veneers in 2006, an increase of 15 percent over 2004. That number has only continued to grow, with last year marking a 12% increase in cosmetic dentistry. Unsurprisingly, veneers were the most requested procedure.
There’s no doubt that having a brighter smile can substantially improve one’s life. But the emphasis placed on attaining such a smile, on television and on Instagram, perfect teeth have become another status symbol on the internet.
Our smiles are among the first things people notice about one another, and the decision to change it or not should not be because of social media pressure. Only think about changing your smile if it’s for you.
