There are actually many different things which are referred to as veneers, but generally it is a thin covering over another surface. Veneers (called Zahnverblendungen in Germany) are used in woodworking, masonry, stone manufacturing, brick laying and even in some biology terminology. But when you ask an everyday person what they think veneers means, they will most likely respond that it has something to do with dentistry. This is true: dental veneers are the primary reason why you would want to look up information about the word.
Aesthetics and restoration
As we learn more and more about medicine and the human body as a species, and our sciences advance, we get more confident about fixing problems. Even just 100 years ago, nobody would have been able to do anything about a yellowed tooth even if they wanted to. The technology simply wasn’t advanced enough. It should come as no surprise that would we meet a famous person such as Elizabeth I or Marie Antoinette, who have traditionally been regarded as icons of beauty from history, we would probably have been disgusted by the condition of their teeth. The average life expectancy was, still just a few hundred years ago, just shy of 40. But with medical advances, especially in the field of dentistry and veneers, we are now able to deal with the majority of problems that people can cause to their teeth through accident or neglect.
It is now possible to cover up nasty blemishes or cavities with veneers. It is possible to replace teeth entirely with prosthetics and even replace part of the jaw in a serious accident. People with no teeth can get false teeth and they have advanced to the stage where they are almost unrecognizable as such to a casual observer.
It should not be surprising that in the future, we will probably be able to recreate the original body part that went missing by using genetic information and technology. This will probably make veneers redundant.
Alternative therapy to veneers
Any dental imperfections were only able to be corrected in the past with a crown. This is basically a false tooth made from porcelain that is cemented to whatever remains of the original tooth. It can be very tiny, to correct only a small part of the tooth or in can be half the size of the tooth or more in serious dental trauma injury types. These are more complicated to make, but now with 3D imaging technology and the ability to access older dental records for individual patients has allowed dentists to recreate the original tooth using video rendering software and networked model printing and casting.
There are also much cheaper non-permanent veneers. These are modeled according to the original shape of the teeth and can be removed and reused. They are made from a resin like flexible material. You can take part in this type of do it yourself tooth restoration with an actual mail order kit. The way this works is that you make the molds of your teeth yourself using the flexible resin and then send this off and the actual veneers created in the lab are then mailed back to you.
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