No one likes being made to feel pain, and most of us will do our best to avoid it. We sneak carefully around stinging nettles. We do strange little jigs around bees and wasps. We avoid going for check-ups at the dentist.
Wait! Rewind! That last one is not such a good idea. It’s also based on a premise that is fast becoming obsolete.
Whereas in your parents’ day, going to the dentist could entail pain from teeth being drilled, these days we have much more access to local anaesthesia and it’s a rare dentist who will insist on you having treatment without being numbed first.
We know what you are going to say next. You’re going to say that just having the local anaesthetic hurts. It hurts when the needle goes in and then it hurts when the liquid anaesthetic is injected into your gums and palette.
Well, that may be true at some dentists, but not here at Smilecraft in Stevenage because we have The Wand.
Never heard of The Wand? Then let us tell you all about it. By the time we’ve finished, you may not be actually clamouring for an anaesthetic, but if we need to give you one, you aren’t going to mind at all.
Why do stings hurt?
This is the question that dental researchers asked themselves when they were trying to work out ways to deliver injections without pain. Turns out, it’s not actually the needle entering the skin that causes pain, it’s when too much liquid goes into the cells too fast and they feel like they are going to burst.
What is The Wand?
The Wand is a computer-controlled way of delivering local anaesthetic. It looks more like a pen that a syringe. The computer injects small amounts of liquid at just the right pace so that the cells never feel like they are going to burst, and there is no pain.
You won’t feel a thing. You may even find yourself asking us if we have started with the injections yet.
So, don’t be scared any more. If you’d like to see The Wand, do ask next time you are in for a check-up. It’s a great gadget.