We’re all smiling that the warmer months are back (although with our weird weather this year, who knows?) so it’s a good issue to feature dental health! We’ve spoken a lot in our pages about how easily we can take our health for granted, and our dental health is not excluded.

Some of us are blessed genetically to have good teeth and gums, while others are not so lucky. It’s easy for us to believe that if we have an infection or issue in our mouth that other parts of our bodies will not be impacted. However, we’re coming to understand more fully every day just how integrated all of the systems in our body truly are. How we care for our teeth, our gums, and our mouths and how healthy they are can be impacted by how often we visit a dentist.

Today we have tremendous technologies that can help us to ensure good dental health. Bad dental health can be indicative of many issues, and many people end up with bad dental health simply because they are afraid of the dentist. Luckily, our feature columnist this month, Dr. Lucila Martinez-Castillo, has written a great article about how to combat those fears.

Fear is also a topic we’ve discussed in our pages. Fear can be very instructive and even a life preservation tool. If you are walking down a solitary street alone at night, fear can be your body’s first indicator that you may no longer be alone on the road. In that instance, fear is your ally, your first response system that alerts you to pick up your pace and quickly identify a strategy to ensure your safety in a potentially dangerous situation.

Often, however, our fears come from childhood traumas,  or even from irrational thoughts or reactions to every day experiences. In these cases, fear can be both an emotion that debilitates us and one that allows us the opportunity for growth.

As Dr. Martinez-Castillo’s article highlights, there are things you can do about fear when it shows up in your life. It’s a part of the human experience that I love the most - the ability for each of us to choose for ourselves what we wish to do about any of the circumstances that present in our lives.

That’s not to say that we always enjoy fear when it shows up in our lives in that way. Fear can at face value feel uncomfortable and downright scary. Yet, if we choose to confront our fears, to transform the experience, we can feel and become positively empowered. From that perspective, fear can be an enormous blessing.

How incredible it is to be given the opportunity to face our fears directly! Whether your fears are of the drills at the dental office, a fear of public speaking, or even telling people no, the journey in confronting those fears can lead you to discover something that we often forget... we are more powerful than we really even know! Transforming fears can bring powerful reminders.

Enjoy the month and all of us at CoSozo hope that May brings you many reasons to use your smile extensively!