A right old pain
Chris Geiger visits his dentist and finds it an expensive ten minutes. It’s amazing to think that should my car explode into a ball of fire, my teeth would survive; enabling some poor soul to identify me by my dental records.
It’s also incredible that if my body were to be exhumed in thousands of years time, even if my skeleton had rotted away, my teeth would look as good as the day I was buried – still displaying wine and coffee stains no doubt. So how is it then, that should some plonker fail to remove a stone from an olive I’m eating, these natural enamelled warriors disintegrate faster than house prices in a recession?
Our teeth appear to withstand any hardship or adversity when we no longer need them, yet squeeze them against the softest ice cream and they create more pain than having a bone marrow sample taken.
So after one of my teeth found a stone in an olive last week, I ended up with a lisp that even Chris Eubank would have been embarrassed about; until I could find and register with a dentist.
On arrival I was asked to have a full X-ray. I however, simply wanted the crumbling remains of my tooth removed. I explained that X-rays dramatically increase the risk of thyroid and mouth cancer. In a recent report, researchers found that patients who had been X-rayed by their dentist at least ten times were more likely to develop the disease. Dentists have been warned that X-rays should not really be given at a check-up or when registering new patients. However this is a nice money earner for them; it would be like a restaurant not selling wine.
Eventually after narrowly avoiding wrestling on the floor, we solved the argument with a simple arm wrestle. I explained when I take my car to have its exhaust replaced, they don’t insist on doing a full service first.
With cancer rates for thyroid and mouth cancer doubling in 30 years, scientists think that the potential dangers of dental X-rays have been overlooked.
I appreciate that X-rays can reveal problems that simply can’t be seen by the naked eye. Tooth decay, for instance, can be far more extensive than it appears. Therefore the need for X-rays won’t go away. However dentists should be required to undertake training to ensure they are up to date with the latest techniques in deciding when and how to take X-rays.
Dental leaders recommend that patients protect their thyroid – a hormone-releasing gland at the base of the neck – by wearing lightweight lead collars or bibs when being X-rayed.
Between five and nine X-rays and the risk rises four-fold, the journal Acta Oncologica reports. In most danger are those who have ten or more X-rays, their risk was nearly six times that of someone who had never been X-rayed in the dentist’s chair.
Once the foundations of my tooth had been recovered, a little like an archaeologist digging up some old pottery. As punishment for not having an X-ray, a young dental nurse hoovered my tongue up a tube, and then got me gargling in what can only be described as antifreeze; with added salt to make the point.
Finally I questioned why they wanted over £150 for just a few minutes work; he replied “well I could have extracted it slowly if you’d wanted”.
Chris Geiger is an ambassador for Cancer Research UK and Above & Beyond. To donate directly visit www.Donate.ChrisGeiger.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @Chris_Geiger.
