Don’t skip appointments and risk your oral health. Try these strategies instead.
For Hope Alcocer, the diagnosis was grim: 11 cavities. Inflamed gums. A tooth in need of a root canal.
As the list of problems grew, so did her feelings of shame and fear. Shame that she had waited more than a decade to seek care. And fear because she could no longer avoid the dentist.
Her anxiety stemmed from an experience as a teenager, when her dentist brushed aside her concerns that she wasn’t numb enough before filling a cavity.
The pain made her want to jump out of the chair. “My pain was an 11 out of 10,” she said. “That’s how much it hurt.”
Dental anxiety is a common problem. Studies of U.S. adults generally find that around 20 percent of respondents have moderate to high fear of dental care. The severity ranges from mild uneasiness to severe phobia and can be rooted in earlier negative experiences or traumas.
The more fearful someone is, the more they postpone care, and the more likely they are to develop painful problems that require expensive or complex treatment, experts say.