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Teeth, jaws and the like
I had my first dental checkup in three years, and my teeth remain fine. Tech level has advanced again: I was given a small plastic-wrapped CCD imager to hold in my mouth for the X-rays, rather than a film holder, and my teeth were on a laptop screen within moments.
If I read the notes on the X-ray source correctly, it's 65keV; hc/E is then about 0.2 angstroms, which seems a surprisingly hard X-ray - I'm used to CuKa sources at 1.54A and synchrotrons that run at 1.00A. Does anyone have a reference for the X-ray absorption spectrum of air?
The toothache-like thing that has afflicted me for the last month is not tooth-related, but inflammation of the socket of the ball-and-socket joint at the right-hand side of my jaw; I'm told a major cause of this is grinding one's teeth together at night out of stress. I can take ibuprofen and hope it goes away, I can meditate constantly on the need to keep my teeth slightly apart when doing anything other than eating, or I can get the dentist to have made for me a small plastic cap to keep my teeth from grinding.
Generic ibuprofen costs 10p a tablet, and I should take three tablets a day. The custom-made small plastic cap costs three hundred pounds; it appears to be patented in such a way that it has to be manufactured by American dentists at USAnian-health-care costs.
If I read the notes on the X-ray source correctly, it's 65keV; hc/E is then about 0.2 angstroms, which seems a surprisingly hard X-ray - I'm used to CuKa sources at 1.54A and synchrotrons that run at 1.00A. Does anyone have a reference for the X-ray absorption spectrum of air?
The toothache-like thing that has afflicted me for the last month is not tooth-related, but inflammation of the socket of the ball-and-socket joint at the right-hand side of my jaw; I'm told a major cause of this is grinding one's teeth together at night out of stress. I can take ibuprofen and hope it goes away, I can meditate constantly on the need to keep my teeth slightly apart when doing anything other than eating, or I can get the dentist to have made for me a small plastic cap to keep my teeth from grinding.
Generic ibuprofen costs 10p a tablet, and I should take three tablets a day. The custom-made small plastic cap costs three hundred pounds; it appears to be patented in such a way that it has to be manufactured by American dentists at USAnian-health-care costs.
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I suspect the NHS is giving you a better price on those plastic things than we get here in the States, but I'm not sure about that. Another factor to consider is whether there's a Cambridge-area dentist who can not only make the cap, but make sure it's fitted properly and adjust it if need be. (I don't use one of these; a friend does, so I know a bit about them.)