Does bonding come off when you chew hard substances?
Thursday, April 16th, 2009Question:
Does bonding just fall off a tooth with chewing a hard substance?
- Mike in Georgia
Mike,
Dental bonding involves the application of a composite material to the tooth. It is different from porcelain veneers in that it is made out of composite, not porcelain, and it is shaped on the spot by the dentist rather than baked in an oven by a dental laboratory and later bonded to the tooth. To read about veneers, see our Seattle porcelain veneers page.
The bond to the tooth is very strong, and ordinarily it doesn’t come off. But sometimes it does. It will come off if:
1. It hasn’t been bonded on properly.
2. It is abused. Normal chewing of hard substances wouldn’t be abuse. We mean things like playing a contact sport without mouth protection, biting on metal or rock or other very hard substances, or getting struck in the mouth.
3. You have a problem with grinding your teeth or other occlusal problems, including certain TMJ disorders that haven’t been addressed or taken into account by your dentist.
Or it could be a combination of the above factors that causes the bonding to fail. For example, if the bond is only moderately strong instead of its full strength, it will be more susceptible to lesser degrees of the bottom two problems.
If your bonding has come off because of normal chewing of a hard substance, I would suspect that there could be some improvement in how the bonding was placed. Sometimes dentists don’t fully analyze your chewing patterns so as to shape bonding to be able to withstand normal mouth function. That’s my guess about what has happened, but I could be wrong, since I haven’t examined you.