Dental wise

DR. Mahfujul Haq Khan BDS, DDS, FSDCE (USA), PhD (Japan), Post Doc. (Japan) Specialised: Crown and Bridge work, and Periodontal plastic surgery (USA) Senior Medical Officer, Department of Dentistry, BIRDEM Hospital

Q. Hello Dr.Khan
Tell me something about gum disease. When I visit the dentist, every time they suggest that I go for cleaning (Scaling). But I heard that regular scaling is not good for our teeth. Is it true? Yes I feel better after scaling, but should I do that every year? Anyway how can scaling help/cure our gum health?
Helaluddin Ahmed, Uttara Model TownDhaka

A. Sorry you heard totally wrong information about cleaning (Scaling). We strongly recommend scaling once in a year if you really want sound oral and dental health.

Gum (Gingival ) Disease
Did you know that more than 75% of all adults have gum disease? Many people have gum disease and are not even aware they have this problem.

Did you know that gum disease is the number one reason to adults lose their teeth

Gum disease is a "silent" disease-until your teeth become loose and fall out--many people do not know they have it and how seriously they do.

Did you know that HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) can be passed by kissing between two people who have advanced gum disease?

A recent report indicated that a young woman in a relationship with a man who had HIV, caught AIDS from kissing him. Both people had moderate to advanced periodontal disease and it is believed that she caught the AIDS because of a direct blood transfer between their diseased gums.

Some sign and symptom of Gum disease
Do your gums bleed when you brush, floss or use a toothpick?
Are your gums red, swollen and painful?
Do you have pus coming from between your gums and teeth if you push on your gums?
Are your gums pulling away from your teeth?
Has there been a change in the way your teeth come together when you bite or chew on food?
Do your teeth look longer because of receding gums?
Are your teeth loose?
Do you have bad breath?
If you wear a partial denture does it still fit the same?

If any of these statements are true then you may have a problem with your gums. You should visit your dentist and get an evaluation and schedule an appointment. You may need more than just a routine cleaning for your teeth to get your gums healthy again.

TREATMENT)
Dental Cleaning (Scaling)
Scaling is usually the first dental treatment a patient receives for Gum disease (periodontal disease). Scaling and root planing attempts to remove all of the unwanted irritants under a patient's gums in an attempt to eliminate inflammation and infection. It's like removing the scales from a fish. We use ultrasonic vibrating tools (Painless) to blast unwanted hardened deposits off of the patient's teeth during this phase of scaling and root planing. Scaling leaves a rough tooth surface so planing is needed next.

A carpenter planes wood so that it's smooth. Essentially we perform the same procedure on a surgical level on the surface of the teeth. This allows the gums to regenerate without irritation. The gum tissue normally shrinks and becomes tight around the teeth after this scaling and root planing because there is no longer anything there to irritate the gums. Scaling and root planing can also reduce or eliminate the bleeding gums.

After scaling and root planing is completed the gum tissue is allowed to heal and the results are later documented by charting the patient's pocket depth. Our aim is to achieve a 1 to 3 millimeter thickness of gum tissue after scaling and root planing.

Scaling and root planing is a non-surgical treatment, patients often feel comfortable with it, however, scaling and root planing is most effective is treating only in early gum disease.

Unfortunately, scaling and root planing is not a cure for advance cases (Periodontal disease).

If there is a great deal of bone loss, a situation known as moderate to advanced periodontitis, then surgical periodontal treatment is required. Periodontal disease is a chronic problem, without ongoing treatment the infection and disease will recur, and each time it does, more bone can be lost, until eventually the teeth become loose and need to be removed.

For more information visit Dr Khan's website www.aikodental.com

Fashion for Development

2004 has been a terrible year for Bangladesh with raging floods and heavy, devastating rains. The year ended in tremendous loss and sadness as the Tsunami waves destroyed countless lives and homes and lay much of South Asia in ruins. Coming from South Asia, I can't help but feel emotionally, and more importantly, spiritually very close to the men and women who have suffered this awful loss. But there isn't much that I, or anybody, can do to alleviate the pain and suffering. I can only send out my love, hoping that all our love will together create a safer, stronger tomorrow for us all.

Instead of emphasizing the sorrows, I have chosen to portray the hope we need to sustain us through these trying times, by playing with colors in my collection.

All the fabrics I have used for my collection have been made by the weavers of Bangladesh. Every ingredient for the garments has come from the villages of Bangladesh. The tunes that played during my show were all from Bangladesh, too.

For my collection at Düsseldorf, I used silks of various weight and texture. Some of these silks are recycled material and some have been mixed with cotton. I also put in a lot of color, though winter collections are usually not very bright. I like to think of these colors as the spirit of my collection

This was my first show in Germany and I thoroughly enjoyed the task of showcasing the incredible work of the craftspeople of Bangladesh, hoping to give the poor and the unfortunate a chance to show the world what they are capable of doing, or rather, an opportunity to hold their heads high and step out of this abject poverty with their own capacity so that they can come out on top with grace and with dignity.

By Bibi Russell

It is only a myth

People always think that baldness is a hereditary factor. Well, things are turning out differently, folks. It appears that this hereditary factor is only a myth. Just because previous generations of your family have experienced baldness, thinning hair and receding hairlines, does not mean that you are destined for the same. It might be hereditary or it might not. There are other factors that lead to baldness too. One of the major causes that enhance baldness is air pollution. The fumes, dirt and other pollutants in the air cause baldness. Added with too much sweating, it can be very damaging to the hair. Excessive oil production from the scalp also increases hair loss. If this oil production combines with sweating, fumes and dirt, the situation will get worse. Sometimes hair-care products residue causes hair loss. One of the major causes not taken seriously by many is emotional stress (a hectic lifestyle, high pressure job, tension etc) and physical stress to your body (crash dieting, medication, pregnancy, menopause, etc.)

Remember that physical or emotional stress is sometimes unavoidable but you can always control the other situation that causes hair loss and thinning hair.

 

UNDER A DIFFERENT SKY

Dish it out

She is tired of it. Totally tired of it. Coming down the stairs she knew it would be on. And it is…not like things would just change overnight. Started a few months back and been going on since. First it was semi-interesting. She never visited Bangladesh, and never really seen quality Bengali programs so this was the closest to knowing Bangladesh and Bangladeshis for her, besides seeing her parents and their friends. The satellite/Dish revolution…
finally the Bangladeshis have caught on. At last besides having ZEETV and B4U, they have added NTV, ATN Bangla, Channel I and Tara in America…so now as her father puts it, they are getting 'gorom gorom' Bangladesh every hour on the hour. She was a bit relieved thinking finally something will stop her mom from being hooked to those colourfully pathetic, mentally deranging ZEE serials. And even though her mother wasn't totally off of it, she was much better than before. Now she was more interested in watching the Bangla natoks and even the Bangladeshi advertisements seemed way more entertaining, so they kept on watching, one natok after another, cooking programs after some innovative music videos, the new girls and their taller, fairer selves, slightly more fashionable, slightly more English speaking. She liked watching them; she liked knowing how Bengali mainstream defines beauty and style. And she compared herself against each of these girls, defining and re-defining herself.
While having dinner watching some political show that her father was hooked on aired on Channel I, her mother said, "Our Mira could easily get into modelling if she was in Bangladesh, do you see some of those girls, na ache chiri na ache nuri." Mira was quick with her reply of "As If!!! I would never stoop down to that, I rather do a commercial for Walmart." But inside she was flattered. Really her Mother thinks so? She can be one of them…for the next few days she wore salwar kamizes at home…
she even dug out some Bengali band tapes that her cousins had sent from Bangladesh. But it was just a phase…
a peaceful one for her parents and an experimental one for her. When her mother started bragging to her friends about how the Bangla channels have made Mira more Bengali and how Mira is finally "getting it" she was a bit irritated. Why does her mother have to brag at the end of everything? That night her father had called Bangladesh, Mira got to talk to her cousin who was the same age as her and spoke ZEETV English (ending most sentences with a rhetorical "no"). Mira told her cousin, "so guess what, I have been watching Bangla TV and stuff, pretty cool ya? Her cousin who has always sounded a lot less cooler than her, laughed out and said, "But why? Why would you watch those when you are in America, don't you guys have MTV or something? Even we don't watch Bangla channels in Dhaka, I thought our American cousin was more trendy than that, no?" The next day she changed the channel to Style Networks and watched a few re-runs of Seinfeld and Friends on NBC. But then her mother came out of the kitchen and kept on telling her to change it back to one of the bangla channels as Siddiqa Kabir was on and she was going to teach how to make Mula er Bhorta. Mira told her mom she doesn't need to learn how to make that smelly rubbish, and inevitably within five minutes it was back, the usual fights and arguments and guilt trips between her mother and her which had disappeared for a while. Mira welcomed them; she wasn't going to live on without changing the channels back to the normal stuff; she wasn't going to live in a bubble created by her parents, the bubble which would eventually make her an invalid in her circle, and she too would end her sentences with a rhetorical "no." Her mother ended the argument with her usual melodramatic guilt trip- "you will never change, I thought you really did change this time, but no I was wrong." Mira was not going to let it go either; she also screamed out "oh ya, you think some television has the power to change me? If you want me to be Bangladeshi so badly why didn't you ever take me back there, why did you yourself settle here yet you act like there is nothing better in the world than to be Bangladeshi, you are so confused mom, so pathetic." That's where it ended. And now it's a different day, her mother sitting in one corner of the sofa watching Robindro Sangeet, Mira sitting gloomily on the other corner…both still with stern wishes, desperately hoping for the other to change.

By Iffat Nawaz