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Mercury-free Restoration

The Smile Suite made a choice to stop using “mercury-containing” fillings. Although these “silver” fillings were easy to use and relatively inexpensive, they had a nasty habit of breaking many of the teeth in which they were being placed. Mercury is the silver liquid that we see in thermometers. As it heats up, it expands. As it cools down, it contracts. This expanding and contracting also occurs in the fillings in your teeth as you eat hot and cold foods causing this reaction to increase frequently.

Eventually, all of this expanding and contracting causes cracks to develop in your teeth. When “silver fillings” break a tooth, the tooth usually requires a crown or all-ceramic onlay for a repair. Most of the crowns or onlay restorations that we do at our cosmetic dentistry practice today are to repair teeth with old silver fillings.