“Snap-on-Smile,” maker of a cosmetic device that snaps on over your teeth, says sales of its device rose 22.2 percent in the fourth quarter of ’08, compared to the third quarter. December sales were 62 percent higher than those in October. Recession be damned, people are still spending money on big ticket and small ticket dentistry.
My only concern is that you have to snap your “Snap-on smile” over your teeth and according to a recent survey, well, half of y’all don’t have all your teeth.
The online survey, 1 conducted by ICOM Information and Communications LP on behalf of Nobel Biocare, surveyed 54,680 American adults and revealed that nearly 50 percent of adults are missing at least one tooth. While most adults were aware of the visible consequences of missing teeth, including difficulty chewing food and impact to the appearance of a smile, there was limited awareness of the more serious health consequences, which can include bone loss that may lead to changes in the shape of the face and repositioning of existing teeth.
According to Dr. Chris Marchack, DDS, a California-based dentist, the majority of patients are unaware of the health consequences that can arise from missing teeth.
“We see patients every day who are hesitant to replace a missing tooth because they see it only as an aesthetic issue and are concerned about perceived vanity.”
While there was a very strong correlation between prevalence of missing teeth among lower income households and among those with less educational achievement, the presence of missing teeth was still shown to have a remarkably high prevalence even among adult Americans with higher incomes. In this survey, reported to be the largest known consumer survey in dentistry, 33 percent of American adults in households with greater than $75,000 annual income also had missing teeth.
The survey found that smile and appearance of teeth scored the highest (first and second, respectively) in terms of importance to personal appearance — exceeding hair, clothes, eyes, facial features and physique. In fact, nearly 90 percent of respondents ranked their smile as the most important attribute and almost 87 percent ranked the appearance of teeth as the second most important feature.
Hmm, they rank smiles and appearance of teeth as ‘most important’ yet half are missing at least one tooth… hello, is that opportunity knocking?
According to a Time/CNN story mentioned in our News Briefs section in this issue, people are either taking advantage of their employee benefits and getting their dental work done before they get laid off or they’re drowning their sorrows with chocolates and jawbreakers and grinding their teeth to the nubs after being laid off. Either way, you win.
According to anecdotal reports and reported in Ad Age magazine, pink-slipped Wall Streeters are flocking to their dentists seeking relief from their stress-induced teeth-grinding.
Perhaps we shouldn’t take comfort in recessions and benefits and vanity and such, after all, laxative sales traditionally do well in recessions.
