For some of us, the early years of our lives were spent too much on eating and drinking the wrong things, and not enough on keeping away the problems caused by this course of action. Although childhood visits to the dentist tended to make us see that there were potential problems, it just wasn’t that much fun to be as kind to our teeth as would be wise – and we ended up with problems.

For others, the real problems with our teeth developed later on. Without parental guidance to take us to the dentist, we revelled in our freedom perhaps a little bit too much and we drank black coffee, red wine and fizzy drinks of just about every colour we could lay our hands on. In addition, some of us may have smoked a few cigarettes and wolfed down a few sugary snacks. If we take this and add it to the youthful damage described above, we can see a pattern emerging.

The problem, after all, with doing exactly what we wanted, when we wanted it, is that there is payback some way along the line, and in the case of your teeth it can appear very prominently. If you have serious staining and decay, there may not be enough for a cosmetic dentist to work with in terms of whitening the tooth. It may be the case that they have to crown it instead.

Having a crown placed on your tooth is something of a “fresh start”, whatever has happened to get your teeth in that condition in the first place. Once you have this done, it is important to leave behind the choices that led to the decay or the damage that was done to your teeth. However, you are unlikely to be ignorant of this information – often, the dentist needs to grind away much of the original tooth in order to fit the crown, so it is impossible to be unaware of the seriousness of the treatment. Nonetheless, as a repair for teeth that are not fit for purpose, the choice to have crowns fitted may be a good one.