DENTAL ROUNDUP

Along with good hair and good skin, I reckon that a good set of straight, white teeth are one of the three best beauty gifts your genes can bestow upon you – and that’s quite apart from the well-documented health advantages of strong, well-aligned and eff

Fortunately for people like me who chose their parents carelessly, there’s a huge amount that can be done nowadays to make up for any Dna-based dental deficiency. The same goes for those who may have taken their teeth for granted and suffered the consequences: dinginess, decay and tooth-loss.

Ideally, anyone with an overcrowded mouth or a bad bite would have this corrected as a child, before it became a major problem requiring extensive and expensive intervention. In my generation, however, they’d pull out a teenager’s decayed tooth with no thought of replacing it. What’s more, you were only taken for orthodontic assessment if you could eat an apple through a tennis racquet.

Both technology and our own expectations have come a long, long way since then. And for those of us who missed out on modern- day dental care during childhood and young adulthood, it’s not too late to turn back the clock – as long as your gums and jawbone are reasonably healthy, that is.

Having myself spent two years in conventional braces from the age of 36 – I waited until after the wedding photos and the honeymoon! – and then gone for a total dental rejuvenation including the replacement of toxic amalgam fillings and the fitting of numerous crowns, I can tell you from experience that it was worth every minute of the time it took, and every penny of the admittedly not-inconsiderable expense.

The dentists we’ve featured below can rejuvenate your smile in a way that will take years off you. Given time and your serious commitment to the process, the orthodontists can correct misalignment, restore harmony to your features and give you a whole new lease on life. Now, isn’t that’s something to smile about?