School Spirit Month

Earn Extra Ortho Bucks!!!

September's Theme is School Spirit!

Show your school spirit by wearing your school colors or shirt with your school's name or any way you can think of to show your school spirit & you will earn an extra Ortho Buck. Remember, parents can participate & earn extra Ortho Bucks for you!

The deadline is nearing to submit your photos for the Where in the World is Yang Orthodontics contest. Please e-mail your photos by September 15. We can't wait to see where you've been!

Tricia C. won our Netflix contest. Tricia referred a friend to our office & we put her name in a drawing to win Netflix for her family for one year! Congratulations!

Earn Extra Ortho Bucks!!

It's August & the theme for this month is Hawaiian! Come to your appointment wearing your Hawaiian gear & earn an extra Ortho Buck!

Parents & siblings can earn extra Ortho Bucks for the patients, too. Wear a lei or a Hawaiian shirt or a hula skirt when you come in for your August appointment.

Earn Extra Ortho Bucks!!

Participate in our theme months

and earn extra Ortho Bucks!

July's Theme is Patriotic Month

Wear Red, White & Blue to your appointments,

or just stop by wearing the appropriate attire

and earn an extra Ortho Buck.

(Parents can join in the fun and earn extra

Buck for their kids!)

The theme for August is Hawaiian Month.

Wear a lei, or a Hawaiian shirt or a hula skirt!

Family Fun Day!

 You are invited to...

Family Fun Day

July 23, 2011

Red Morton Park

(near the intersection of Valota Road and Roosevelt in Redwood City)

12:00 to 4:00 pm

Bring your friends and baby brother

Bring your sister, dad and mother

Dr. Yang will entertain us

with his balloon twisting prowess

There will be games & food galore

Contests, prizes and much more

We look forward to a day of fun!

Please RSVP if you can come

Prizes to include an iTouch!

and a Spa Package

*Must be present to win raffle prizes

   

Have You Seen Our New Website?

Check out

www.orthodontistrwc.com 

New Contest!!

Scavenger Hunt/Where in the World is Yang Orthodontics?

1st Place: $100 Gift Card  (your choice...Best Buy, Target or Amazon)

2nd Place: $15 iTunes Card

3rd Place: 2 Movie Tickets

Each entry will score points for each task completed correctly.

Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 entries with the highest scores.***

There are 2 parts to the contest:

The online Scavenger Hunt section

The Where in the World is Yang Orthodontics? section

The answers to our scavenger hunt section can be found on our website

http://www.orthodontistrwc.com/

Please e-mail Scavenger Hunt answers to info@orthodontistrwc.com

Please e-mail Where in the World pictures. Include your name & which task you have completed. All tasks must have their own picture. If you are not present in the picture with your Yang Orthodontics cinch sack, the picture will not count and you will not get the points. (Please e-mail all pictures at one time.)

You must be a current patient (either undergoing full treatment, Phase 1, Phase 2 or in observation status) of Yang Orthodontics in order to receive any prizes.

Please note that by emailing or sending your pictures to Yang Orthodontics, you are giving us permission to post these pictures and/or utilize them for marketing purposes.

**Winners will be determined by points. If there is a tie for either 1st, 2nd or 3rd place, winning names will be determined by a drawing.

Contest Deadline: September 15, 2011

Win a Spin!!

Win a spin on our Yang Orthodontics Wheel!

1. Refer a friend, if they start treatment you get a spin.
2. Start treatment & get a spin.
3. Redeem 40 Ortho Bucks for a spin.

Current prizes:

• Noah's & Burger King - $10 gift certificate
• Cold Stone, Jamba Juice, iTunes, Starbucks, Subway & Barnes & Noble - $15 gift certificate
• Target - $20 gift certificate
• Best Buy - $25 gift certificate
• Dinner & Movie for 2
• Santa Cruz Boardwalk -1 pass for unlimeted rides
• Great America - 1 ticket

Prizes will  change from time to time...so stay tuned!

I'm 29, Am I too old for braces?

Great question, and you are absolutely not "too old" for braces! At Yang Orthodontics, nobody is “too old” for braces! In fact, we read a fascinating statistic recently: adults getting braces has actually jumped 24 percent since 1996! Also, one of every five patients in orthodontic treatment nowadays is over the age of 21. Of course, braces help make your teeth stay strong, healthy and become perfectly-aligned. But we’d like you to know orthodontic treatment with Dr. Stephen Yang can be successful at any age, and adults especially appreciate the benefits of a beautiful smile.
In fact, we are proud to offer an adult-friendly option for straightening teeth called Invisalign, which uses a series of invisible, removable and comfortable aligners that no one can tell you're wearing. So, you can smile more during treatment as well as after.
If you’ve been thinking about getting that perfect smile, we would love to have you visit for a consultation at our Redwood City, CA office. Please give us a call at (650) 366-5758 to set one up and have a wonderful rest of the week!

Can I Eat Candy With Braces?

Question: Can I Eat Candy With Braces?

You have braces and you want to sink your teeth into a gooey candy bar, but you wonder "Can I eat candy with braces?" If you've asked yourself this very question, the answer isn't too surprising.

Answer: There are many foods you can and can't eat with braces, but eating candy when you have braces is specifically not recommended for a number of reasons. Understanding why and how eating candy when you have braces will hurt your chances of having successful orthodontic treatment, thus affecting the health of your teeth and gums in the long run, will hopefully help diminish your cravings for sweet treats while you have braces; and hopefully beyond your orthodontic treatment as well.

It's All About the Sugar

For starters, let's take a look at the obvious. Candy is loaded with sugar, which is a carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are what fuel the bacteria on your teeth to produce acids that cause tooth decay to form. For a tooth without braces, candy is a large threat. Now add in the brackets and bands onto your teeth, which are a necessity during your orthodontic treatment, and your teeth most certainly will be facing a nightmare of tooth decay. When you incorporate additional sugar to your diet, along with the difficulty of reaching every surface of the tooth and around the bracket and band attachments with your toothbrush and floss, avoiding candy certainly outweighs giving into a tempting piece of candy.

Sticky, Hard, Gooey Gooey - It's All the Same

Candy can be found in a number of different forms, but it's really all the same when you consider eating candy with braces. From hard mint-type candies, to sticky toffee and gooey chocolate bars, candy does mass amounts of damage to your braces, regardless of what form it comes in.
When you bite into a hard or sticky piece of candy without braces, your tooth is stressed by the force it takes to break down and chew the piece of candy. With braces or your teeth, biting into a hard piece of candy will put additional force onto the bracket or band attachment, along with the tooth. More often than not, the bracket or band will succumb to the force it takes to eat the candy, and they will break or "pop" off. When a bracket or band becomes loose, your orthodontic treatment comes to a screeching halt until you are able to see your dentist or orthodontist to have he problem repaired. For most patients, a loose band or bracket will set their treatment back one to two months.

Life With Braces

Providing Braces in Redwood City, CA, Stephen Yang, DMD

Eating with Braces

What can you eat? Let's talk about what you shouldn't eat! If you've been wanting to drop a few pounds, the first week wearing braces is just your chance! For the first day or so, stick to soft foods. Avoid tough meats, hard breads, and raw vegetables. Before long, you'll be able to bite a cucumber again. But you'll need to protect your orthodontic appliances when you eat for as long as you're wearing braces.

Foods to Avoid

• Chewy foods: bagels, hard rolls, licorice
• Crunchy foods: popcorn, ice, chips
• Sticky foods: caramels, gum (sugarless is OK)
• Hard foods: nuts, candy
• Foods you have to bite into: corn on the cob, apples, carrots
• Chewing on hard things (for example, pens, pencils or fingernails) can damage the braces. Damaged braces will cause treatment to take longer.

General Soreness

When you get your braces on, you may feel general soreness in your mouth and teeth may be tender to biting pressures for three to five days. This can be relieved by rinsing your mouth with a warm saltwater mouthwash. Dissolve one teaspoonful of salt in 8 ounces of warm water, and rinse your mouth vigorously. If the tenderness is severe, take aspirin or whatever you normally take for headache or similar discomfort. The lips, cheeks and tongue may also become irritated for one to two weeks as they toughen and become accustomed to the surface of the braces. You can put wax on the braces to lessen this. We'll show you how!

Loosening of Teeth

This is to be expected throughout treatment. Don't worry! It's normal. Teeth must loosen first so they can be moved. The teeth will again become rigidly fixed in their new – corrected – positions.

Care of Appliances

To successfully complete the treatment plan, the patient must work together with the orthodontist. The teeth and jaws can only move toward their corrected positions if the patient consistently wears the rubber bands, headgear or other appliances as prescribed. Damaged appliances lengthen the treatment time.

Brushing

It's more important than ever to brush and floss regularly when you have braces, so the teeth and gums are healthy after orthodontic treatment. Patients who do not keep their teeth clean may require more frequent visits to the dentist for a professional cleaning. Adults who have a history of gum disease should also see a periodontist during orthodontic treatment

Ortho Dictionary

Parts of Braces

Appliance: Anything your orthodontist attaches to your teeth which moves your teeth or changes the shape of your jaw.
Archwire: The metal wire that acts as a track to guide your teeth along as they move. It is changed periodically throughout treatment as your teeth move to their new positions.
Band: A metal ring that is cemented to your tooth, going completely around it. Bands provide a way to attach brackets to your teeth.
Bond: The seal created by orthodontic cement that holds your appliances in place.
Bracket: A metal or ceramic part cemented ("bonded") to your tooth that holds your archwire in place.
Coil Spring: A spring that fits between your brackets and over your archwire to open space between your teeth.
Elastic (Rubber Band): A small rubber band that is hooked between different points on your appliance to provide pressure to move your teeth to their new position.
Elastic Tie: The tiny rubber band that fits around your bracket to hold the archwire in place. They come in a variety of colors.
Headgear: Headgear uses an external wire apparatus known as a facebow to gently guide the growth of your face and jaw by moving your teeth into proper position. The force is applied to the facebow by a spring-loaded neck strap or head strap. The straps have a safety release that disconnects if the facebow is pulled or snagged.
Headgear Tube: A round, hollow attachment on your back bands. The inner bow of your headgear fits into it.
Hook: A welded or removable arm to which elastics are attached.
Ligature: A thin wire that holds your archwire into your bracket.
Lip Bumper: A lip bumper is an archwire attached to a molded piece of plastic. The lip bumper holds back the molars on your lower jaw to provide more space for your other teeth.
Mouthguard: A device that protects your mouth from injury when you participate in sports or rigorous activities.
Palatal Expander: A device that makes your upper jaw wider.
Retainer: An appliance that is worn after your braces are removed, the retainer attaches to your upper and/or lower teeth to hold them in place. Some retainers are removable, while others are bonded to the tongue-side of several teeth.
Separator or Spacer: A small rubber ring that creates space between your teeth before the bands are attached.
Tie Wire: A fine wire that is twisted around your bracket to hold the archwire in place.
Wax: Wax is used to stop your braces from irritating your lips.

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Orthodontic Procedures

Banding: The process of fitting and cementing orthodontic bands to your teeth.
Bonding: The process of attaching brackets to your teeth using special orthodontic cement.
Cephalometric X-ray: An X-ray of your head which shows the relative positions and growth of the face, jaws, and teeth.
Consultation: A meeting with your orthodontist to discuss a treatment plan.
Debanding: The process of removing cemented orthodontic bands from your teeth.
Debonding: The process of removing cemented orthodontic brackets from your teeth.
Impressions: The process of making a model of your teeth by biting into a soft material that hardens into a mold of your teeth. Your orthodontist will use these impressions to prepare your treatment plan.
Invisalign®: An alternative to traditional braces, Invisalign straightens your teeth with a series of clear custom-molded aligners. Invisalign can correct some, but not all, orthodontic problems.
Ligation: The process of attaching an archwire to the brackets on your teeth.

Panoramic X-ray: An X-ray that rotates around your head to take pictures of your teeth, jaw, and other facial areas.

Don't Sabatoge Your Orthodontic Treatment

Straightening your crooked teeth and solving your bite problems are not something that can be done in days. It’s not done in weeks either, but many months, even 2-3 years, depending on the severity of your case. This means you need to get ready for a long ride and have enough patience to successfully finish the treatment.
Your treatment means wearing some sort of an orthodontics device for as long as needed, plus many other bits and pieces that will come and go as your teeth get into the desired position. From now on you need to make sure you don’t make your orthodontics treatment even harder than it already is.

1. Clean that mouth!

If you weren’t too crazy about your oral hygiene, it’s time to change your attitude. All the stuff that’s in your mouth makes it now super-easy for cavities to appear. You’ve got braces and god knows what other stuff on your teeth. Clean them and make sure you still floss and keep your teeth as clean as possible. Being serious about this can make the difference between healthy teeth at the end of the treatment and teeth that are almost destroyed by cavities. It’s true you cannot have crystal clear teeth with all that junk on it, but, if you don’t brush and floss, you’d be shocked to see what can happen.

2. It won’t kill you to stay away from some food that would damage your orthodontics devices.

I know you like your chewing gum. If you’re an American, chewing this is almost a national sport. And you like your nuts and pistachios maybe. Or some good ole’ pop-corn. Well, if it can damage your braces, just don’t eat it. I love green apples. Well, I don’t bite into them as I’d normally do, but cut them to small pieces or just bite carefully. During my entire treatment I stayed away from almonds or anything that’s too tough to chew.

3. If it breaks, go to the orthodontist

If you’re brackets come loose or something is not OK, call your orthodontist and see if you can get an appointment. Don’t panic, most of the time brackets would come loose because they didn’t stick to the tooth correctly, and it’s something your doctor knows how to fix and expects all the time. Just make the call, see when you can meet and have it solved. It won’t be the first time or the last time something breaks, so don’t worry.

4. Don’t miss your appointments

If your orthodontist told you to come once a month or twice a month, don’t get smart and miss appointments. He’s the one to know how much attention your braces need and how frequent they need to be checked. While you’d love seeing your orthodontist once per treatment, when he takes off your braces, do follow the appointments calendar and make sure you’re not missing them.

5. If you have to wear it for 22 hours, then make sure you do

I’ve had people ask me “how much do I need to wear my Invisalign”, trying to see how much they can keep it off their teeth and still not mess the treatment. Well, you know, if it says “as much as possible, then wear it as much as possible. If you need to wear a device 10 hours/day, wear it 12, if you need to wear something over 20 hours, make sure it doesn’t get off unless you’re eating and brushing. It’s needed for your treatment, don’t mess it up just because you’re not feeling like wearing that.
You have to understand that everything is FOR YOUR GOOD and your orthodontics treatment can be a success and a failure and you’ve got a lot to decide on this. Do your part. Clean your teeth, wear your devices, don’t mess up your own treatment. Because it’s you who’s got to suffer.

March Madness Contest!

It's time for March Madness!  For those who don't know what March Madness is, it's a National college basketball tournament with 64 teams.  The tournament is about 2 1/2 weeks long and after 6 rounds of play, one team emerges as the national mens college basketball champion!

So how is this fun for us?  You guess which teams will win each round, and for every correct answer, you get a certain number of points.  The 3 players with the most points at the end of the tournament will win prizes!

Our prizes:

Grand Prize:  $5000 towards Braces treatment if you get all your picks correct for the entire tournament. 

1st place: $25 iTunes gift card

2nd place: Pair of movie tickets

3rd place: $10 Starbucks gift card.

Entering the contest is easy because we have created a special Yahoo Group for our patients and family members to join.  All it takes is a few simple clicks to select your teams.  The cool part is that at any time during the tournament, you can login and see how you are doing compared to everyone else that is playing. 

To enter our March Madness Contest, please follow this Tournament link:  http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/register/joinprivategroup_assign_team?GID=43982&P=smiles

 

OR

Follow the link below and click "Join Group"

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/register/joingroup

 

 

The Group ID#:   43982

Password:   smiles

 

You will need to sign in with a Yahoo, Facebook, Google account, or create an account.

Patients AND family members are welcome to play!!!

***Note: To win the grand prize, you must get all teams correct for entire tournament.  If no player gets all the picks correct (a perfect bracket) then the Grand Prize will not be awarded.  Of course the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes will still be awarded.  Valid entries must be received by the start of the tournament the morning of March 17.



Good Luck!!!



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Stephen S. Yang, DMD, MS

Holman & Yang Orthodontics
Specializing in Creating Beautiful Smiles
52 Arch Street #2
Redwood City, CA 94062
Office: 650-366-5758
Fax: 650-366-0714
http://www.orthodontistrwc.com/

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April 2011 Invisalign Treatment & Study

Save $1000 on Invisalign Treatment

April 2011 Invisalign Study

Would you, or someone you know like to enjoy the benefits of straighter teeth and a beautiful smile? If so, then this might be a great opportunity!

Dr. Stephen Yang, an Invisalign Orthodontist and Preferred Provider, is conducting a study for Align Technology, Inc., the makers of Invisalign. The study is for new patients of the practice that want to start treatment with Invisalign. Participants of this study will receive $500 off of the normal Invisalign fee AND free Diagnostic Records ($500 value) for a total savings of $1000.



Conditions for the study:

1. Participants must be new patients of the practice and MUST NOT be a current or former patient of the practice.
2. Participants must begin Invisalign therapy during April of 2011. That means initial impressions for therapy are received by Align Technology between April 1 and April 30, 2011.
3. Participants must agree to permit their orthodontic records, including photographs, to be used for educational purposes by Align Technology, Inc.. Participants must sign an agreement form.

This study has a limited number of participants and may be discontinued at any time.

Stephen S. Yang, DMD, MS, Inc.

Invisalign Preferred Provider

52 Arch Street, #2, Redwood City, CA 94062

(650) 366-5758

http://www.orthodontistrwc.com/

Office Renovation

We've updated our office! New paint, new flooring, & new carpet! Don't be surprised when you walk in the door. We hope you like the changes!