Building a Natural Smile Through Cosmetic Dentistry

Everyone wants to have a beautiful smile. After all, your smile is often the first thing people notice about you. Not smiling because you are self-conscious about tooth damage or dental issues can hamper your mood and confidence.

We aren't all born with perfect teeth, but we can find our ideal smile in today's world of dental advancement. Today, we'll explore our goals as we work with you to revitalize your natural smile.

What Do We Call a Perfect Smile?

What makes a perfect smile? That's a more complex answer than you might think. Everyone has their own opinion on the matter, and everyone is different. What would look amazing and perfectly natural on you might look thoroughly out of place and unnatural on someone else.

We are all one-of-a-kind, and so are our teeth. That's why a dentist specializing in cosmetic dentistry requires an extremely high level of experience, skill, and artistry. We have been perfecting this since 2015, when Dr. Meza became the first Costa Rican dentist accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (AACD).

A school of thought holds that the "perfect" smile must be sparkling white, but for many people, the ideal smile they're searching for can look very different. Here, we believe that your smile should reflect who you are; it should be uniquely you, make you feel comfortable and happy, and be crafted to best complement your natural appearance.

How Your Unique Facial Structure Informs Our Process

Each person looks different, partly because of their underlying bone structure. That bone structure determines the height of your cheekbones, the distance between the base of your nose and the top of your lip, the height of your gums, and the line of your jaw. All of this must be measured not only to ensure a perfect fit, but also to determine the necessary proportions so that the elements of your new smile fit seamlessly into your existing smile.

In the case of All-on-X procedures, creating a completely new smile also allows us to tweak your prosthesis to have the best proportional ratio. For example, if you have a relatively long face shape or long gums, short teeth would look out of place, so we would lengthen the teeth to achieve a more pleasing ratio. If you have a short upper lip that exposes quite a lot of gum, we would adjust the gum length in the prosthesis so that your smile shows more teeth and less gum.

How the Muscles and Tendons in Your Face Affect Your Smile

While your underlying bone structure governs the shape of your face, the muscles and tendons of your face determine the way that you smile - if you have dimples, how much your cheeks lift, how wide your mouth draws back, and many other minute details that shape your smile.

Knowing this, our team measures in precise detail how your mouth moves when you smile and how your smile sits at rest. They then use those measurements as a guideline so that when you light up the room with your dazzling new smile, it naturally fits you and your features.

Another consideration for patients above 40 is that our bodies tend to lose bone density as we age, which can affect the size of our jawbone. As your jawbone shrinks, it creates the look of loose, sagging skin and enhances any wrinkles around your mouth - especially noticeable in people who have missing teeth. During the All-on-X procedure, a prosthesis is fabricated for each arch of your teeth to create a more youthful appearance, mimicking a fuller bone structure and reducing the appearance of loose skin and wrinkles.

What Sets Meza Dental Apart

Knowledge, experience, and technical expertise combine with artistic abilities in every design process. Without this combination of knowledge and artistry, even the most perfectly measured artificial teeth can look unnatural. Our team understands that "function comes first" - the goal when creating a beautiful, natural-looking smile is to mimic nature at its best. Our teeth look their best when aligned properly to provide a sound bite.

When designing a beautiful smile, our team considers factors including:

• Gender: female teeth tend to be more oval, male teeth more square

• Age: as you age, your soft tissue tends to drop, so your smile shows less tooth - this can be adjusted

• Ethnicity: different races have evolved unique dental traits

• Personal and Cultural Preferences: Beauty ideals change from place to place

Macro Esthetics

Macro esthetics are considerations related to what other people can see - the visible areas that show when your lips pull back into a smile. Much of the design revolves around getting as close as possible to specific ideal proportions.

Midline: If your teeth's center line doesn't align correctly, it stands out immediately. The line between your front teeth should meet the line running from where your forehead meets the bridge of your nose down to the dip in your top lip.

Macro esthetics also deals with achieving the perfect "reveal" - the ideal amount of tooth surface. Too much reveal can show a lot of gum, and too little can make you look a little older. The incisal display (the cutting edge of your teeth) will ideally be a nice, straight curve, achieved using a mathematical ratio.

Micro Esthetics

As the name suggests, micro esthetics deals with minute details that create the illusion of reality in artificial teeth. To look completely realistic and natural, our lab techs painstakingly create details such as:

• Subtle shading - as you go from the central to the outer teeth, the shade of the enamel darkens slightly; this must be recreated in artificial teeth

• Color dominance - your center teeth will always be more dominant and have the brightest color, achieved by carefully crafting their shape, size, and shade

• Surface texture - natural teeth have irregular shapes and surfaces, which must be recreated with shaping tools and shading

• Translucency - each tooth's cutting edge and outside edge are more translucent than the center, recreated using subtle shading

A Work of Artistry and Science!

So many tiny details go into creating your most beautiful, natural-looking smile - and that's the joy of this process. The result is a smile that gives you confidence, looks natural and beautiful, and is so comfortable you might forget they weren't your natural teeth in the first place.

If you want to take the first step toward perfecting your smile, we offer a free estimate for your care, and our friendly English-speaking staff is happy to answer your questions. Email contact@mezadentalcare.com or call us toll-free from Canada and the US at 1-(877)-337-6392.