Donated Candy Becomes a Sweet Surprise!

We all know that kids, candy, and cavities go hand in hand. As parents, we do our best to keep their little fingers in the fruit crisper and out of the cookie jar. For most of the year, it’s controllable. Well, except for birthday parties (seriously, how many can you attend in a week?), but overall, you are able to stop the kiddos from gobbling down loads of chocolate, gummy bears, and bubble gum. And then comes Halloween.100428293

‘Tis the holiday for obnoxious amounts of candy gathered during Trick-or-Treating adventures. The kitchen table becomes the bargaining table and there is a collective negotiation across the land. Kids everywhere lobby for the ability to consume armfuls of candy while parents are packing it up to save for later. Even with a generous lot of sugar doled out every night after Halloween, somehow, the bounty lasts all the way through Christmas. You can’t throw it out, that’s just wasteful. Not to mention if the kids find out, their attitude is going to match the Frankenstein costume they’re wearing. There must be something better to do with all that extra candy, right? In a word, yes. Continue reading Donated Candy Becomes a Sweet Surprise!

Dental Implants – A Modern Marvel?

Tooth loss is nothing new. If you’ve ever had any caveman friends, then you know that it’s been a common problem since… well since cavemen. It’s no surprise then that Homo sapiens (and maybe a caveman and rabbitfew chimps – I wouldn’t put it past them) across the globe have been searching for the ideal tooth-replacement solution for ages. What might surprise you, though, is Pygmy Pterodactyls! Just kidding. But seriously, it might surprise you to learn that our very own modern marvel – dental implants – have actually been cooking in the minds of ancient peoples for quite some time, quite indeed.

Implants as we know them began with the famous  scientist Per-Ingvar Brånemark. He discovered, rather incidentally, that bone tissue would fuse to titanium when he replaced a rabbit’s femur with a titanium rod. Dr. Brånemark applied his hare-brained scheme to dentistry, and in 1965, the first dental implant replaced the first tooth in a living human skull. Or so we thought. Continue reading Dental Implants – A Modern Marvel?