Irmo Smiles, in Irmo SC, is pleased to provide a full range of dental care services and dental treatments. Our dentistry services include: children's, cosmetic, family, general, laser, orthodontic, preventive, restorative and sedation dentistry.
Often times, snoring is a pre-cursor to a more critical health concern known as sleep apnea. People with sleep apnea experience an obstruction in their airway. Most of the time, they don’t even realize it. The obstruction prevents them from getting oxygen regularly throughout the night. Sleep apnea is a major contributing factor to heart disease. Those suffering from sleep apnea experience elevated blood pressure, which is a key risk factor in acquiring heart disease and strokes.
Sticky plaque -- food, saliva, and bacteria -- starts to form on your teeth after you eat, releasing acids that attack tooth enamel. Untreated plaque turns into tartar, which builds under gum lines and is hard to remove with flossing. The longer it stays on your teeth, the more harmful it is. Bacteria in plaque causes inflammation and leads to gum disease. Having high blood sugar often makes gum disease worse.
Many people think orthodontics is just about straightening crooked teeth, but there’s much more to it than that. Due to a variety of factors out of our control, our teeth and jaws often develop in a way that provides a problematic bite. Sometimes the dental arch at the top or bottom is too narrow, or a patient has overbite (when the upper teeth overlap the lower teeth too much), underbite (when the lower jaw or bottom teeth jut forward and align in front of the top teeth), and crossbite (when the teeth overlap incorrectly on the sides). We use specially designed appliances that gently guide the jaw and teeth into proper alignment while the patient is a child or teen, to prevent serious issues in the future.
Changing the Lives of Children in Our Community
Dr. Raman is proud to be one of the co-founders of the Midlands South Carolina chapter of the Smile for a Lifetime Foundation (www.s4l.org).