A woman with silver toothcaps is warning parents against getting them for their kids. That’s because she’s still stuck with them at age 26.
TikTok user Jennah (@jennahnicolea) posted a video with the warning on Saturday. “If you’re a parent, and your little kids have cavities, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh, they’re just baby teeth. I’ll just get silver caps, because why am I going to expend all the money on porcelain fillings when they’re just going to fall out anyway?’ Reconsider,” she says to start the video.
Why should they reconsider? Jennah knows about this from experience. “Or at least do your research about it,” she continues. “I was one of the silver-teeth kids that had like 100 silver teeth because my parents never brushed my teeth growing up.”
What are the long-term consequences of silver caps?
Now, at 26, Jennah is seeing the results of getting silver caps at a young age. “I still have two silver teeth left,” she says. “It turns out my adult teeth are impacted underneath these, so they’re like laying flat. And they will never grow in unless I get very expensive oral surgery—which I’m not going to do.”
This means Jennah is stuck in a waiting game with her silver teeth. “So either I wait until they fall out and just hope that they don’t fall out,” she explains. “And then have to pay for implants, or just be toothless, or have to get those little glue-in teeth—which I don’t want to do.”
This leads Jennah to her PSA. “So, yeah, if you’re thinking about it, maybe get X-rays, make sure that their adult teeth aren’t impacted first,” she says. “Or, just don’t.”
Federal Drug Administration weighs in on silver fillings
According to the FDA, what we typically call silver fillings are technically called dental amalgams. The fillings are made of mercury, silver, copper, tin, and zinc. They are intended to preserve the child’s baby tooth. This procedure can expose patients to mercury vapor, which can be harmful to certain people. As the FDA notes, dentists are using these fillings less often in recent years, and are instead turning to porcelain, resin, or other composites for filling material.
Concerning removal, the FDA writes, “If your filling is in good condition and your dentist or health care professional says there is no decay beneath the filling, removal of your amalgam filling is not recommended. This is because removing intact amalgam fillings may result in unnecessary loss of healthy tooth structure and potentially exposes you to a temporary increase in mercury vapor released during the removal process.”
TikTok users share their experiences
The video has amassed more than 152,000 views as of Monday morning. In the comments, viewers shared their own experiences with the procedure.
One user said, “My canine was impacted. Insurance covered it!”
A second user wrote, “Some kids have silver teeth because they have enamel hypoplasia. So, no choice.”
Another user said, “This is false. First of all, cavities can be caused by genetics. Doesn’t matter how well you brush. Second, if you get silver caps for your child on baby teeth, their adult teeth will grow in as [normal].”
Jennah responded to this comment with a follow-up video. In the video, she said she usually doesn’t receive so many views and comments on her videos, and therefore wasn’t anticipating this much of a response. She acknowledged there are parts of her original video that didn’t come across as she intended.
Jennah explains in a follow-up
“I wasn’t trying to say that getting silver crowns would make it so that your adult teeth wouldn’t grow in,” she says. “I was just basically trying to say that, if I had known my adult teeth weren’t going to come in, because genetically I have impacted teeth that are laying completely flat on my jawbone, basically. If I had known that my adult teeth wouldn’t come in, obviously me and my mother would not have given me silver teeth for potentially decades of my life.”
Jennah apologizes to anyone who misunderstood her original meaning. All she was trying to communicate was that, in her adulthood, a dentist told her that her childhood dentist should’ve been able to see how her teeth were growing and simply pulled the tooth instead of putting a cap on it. That would’ve allowed Jennah to get braces and hopefully lift her impacted teeth back into alignment. Now that she’s 26, Jennah says she isn’t interested in that procedure.
“At this point, I don’t want to be missing teeth when I’m 26 years old, for years of my life,” she says. “But I’m sorry to anyone that I offended about silver crowns. I wasn’t trying to shame anybody or anything. It was just the fact that it’s something to potentially look into with your dentist to say, ‘Is it possible to know if the teeth are impacted underneath? How long until the crowns come out? How long before I should replace them?’”
@jennahnicolea I think they’re cute now, but I was very embarrassed in high school 🥲 #dentist#fyp ♬ original sound – Jennah
The Daily Dot reached out to Jennah via TikTok comment and direct message for comment.
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