Why Do I Have A Cavity?

As an oral surgeon, I want to share with you a question I often get asked, “Why do I have a cavity?” Well, there’s a lot of reasons you could have a cavity and I probably will tell you is that your dentist is probably the better person to answer this question. But what I can tell you is “What is a cavity?” A cavity is simply this – it’s an area where acid is built up and has remained in contact with your tooth and it is slowly eating away or, we call it demineralizing, remove the hard stuff in that tooth and weaken it, causing it to become soft. It’s almost like going from having a hard piece of plastic to having it be eaten away by something that now makes it just collapse and crush. Once you have a cavity, once that area has been weakened, now other things like bacteria, food, sugars, and temperature, hot and cold, can start to irritate that tooth and cause it to become painful and that is what we don’t want.