Five Steps to Avoid Biden Teeth

Firstly, let me say try to have a sense of humor when reading this and all my columns for that matter. You would be shocked at some of the nasty emails I get form spouses of retired dentists, pounding the keyboard at three AM, throwing angry statements like: “My Murray practiced in Brooklyn for 50 years without any of your high highfalutin machines and he did just fine!!”

In case you are wondering, it looks to me like the President Elect, Joseph Biden has had a full mouth reconstruction, consisting of porcelain crowns covering all of his existing teeth and bridges to replace any missing teeth. No 78 year old wakes up with teeth the color of my old college fridge, minus the Grateful Dead sticker.

Some of my patients claim the crowns are too white, too opaque, and too long and bulky for him. They ask me why he would not have a more natural and more appropriate set of teeth to suit his his face.

How do we avoid the “Biden Smile” in our practice?

1. Narrower teeth; uppers should not look like canoe paddles.
2. Only enough length so that the edges of the uppers hit the line on the lower lip where it goes from dry to wet, when saying the words “fifty-five and five -five- five.” If the gum line is too high, we use pink porcelain, otherwise each tooth looks like a longboard (for you surfers out there.)
3. More definition between the teeth; what we call “embrasures”. They should not look like Peter and Lois’s teeth on Family Guy, formerly called by me: “Flintstone Teeth.”
4. More translucency at the edges, not opaque porcelain from top to bottom.
5. Elimination of metal substructures which allows more translucent porcelain, better mimicking natural teeth.

And don’t bother sending me nasty emails for calling him “President Elect” (And you know who you are). At the time of writing this piece; that was his official title. Chill.)