Cosmetic Dentistry

Cosmetic Dentistry by the Leading Natural Smile Dentist – Dr. Yuriy May

Why has Dr. Yuriy May become a destination for patients seeking Biological Cosmetic Natural Dentist?

At Natural Dentistry, the entire orofacial and craniofacial philosophy is anchored on true biomimetic function and dental esthetics. Dr. Yuriy May, one of the top biological cosmetic dentists in CT  understands that in order for facial and individual beauty to be achieved, both cranial, facial, dental and oral concerns need to be evaluated, understood and ultimately addressed. The challenge of combining the triad of phonetics, function, and esthetics has always been the primary restorative goal of integrative dentists like Natural Dentistry’s Dr. May. As access to information continues to increase, understanding and appreciation of cosmetic dentistry appreciation has increased creating strong demand for expertise for dentists who speak both “biology” and “beauty” in one.

Dr. May’s Cosmetic Dentistry Specialties

Dr. Yuriy May has become a leader in the field of natural smile makeovers and beautiful dental restorations so much so that clients from all walks of life, from humble moms to international politicians to names you have seen on the big screen have flown into our state-of-the-art dental cosmetic and surgery center in Connecticut for week-long smile rehabilitations, smile design assessments, full smile makeovers, veneer redos, and full mouth restorations. Dr. May’s cosmetic specialties include:

• Natural Smile Design & Smile Makeovers: Made to look entirely natural, and entirely perfect like the patient was blessed with the world’s most beautiful teeth, from birth. Natural Smile Makeovers always turn heads
• Poor Cosmetic Dentistry Fixes: Unfortunately, many dentists portray themselves to be “capable” of cosmetic dentistry without true expertise and Dr. May has fixes botched smiles and redoes poor, unnatural-looking veneer cases. Smile ReDos are Dr. May’s specialty and other dentists have refered patients to him for redo’s
• Time Sensitive Smile Makeovers Whether for an award ceremony, a wedding, a job promotion into public office or a movie role, Dr. May specializes in minimally invasive veneer smile makeovers that need to be done quickly, beautifully and with optimal function for long-lasting results. These are the most challenging cases and many doctors cannot achieve a beautiful result that also looks natural – Dr. May is a specialist due to his expertise and high level of attention to detail in addition to collaboration with top dental labs. Dr. May’s relationships with select teams of veneer ceramists and dental technicians allow for his ability to recreate perfection with the 3D visualization and digital workflows and deliver gorgeous results for time sensitive patients
• Dental Restoration Redos: Botched crowns, chiclet veneers, stained and uneven composite veneers, poor gum recontouring and failing anterior bridges are sight for sore eyes. Dr. May has made his name in completely rehabilitating and redoing poor dental work in the esthetic zone (anterior teeth which are visible during a smile) and has won numerous awards for remarkable ethic results in the most dire and difficult of cases

Dr. Yuriy May Smile Makeover Veneer Smile Transformation Video

Watch how Dr. Yuriy May, a top cosmetic dentist in the Tri-State area transforms the cosmetic dentistry patient with a natural smile makeover using 8 veneers. The video includes a peek into our digital dentistry workflow!

Dr. Yuriy May is known for delivering Best Porcelain Veneers in the USA and is certainly a Top Veneer Dentist in Connecticut

Average dentists will all tell you “I can do veneers” but a true smile makeover expert (and artisan!) like Dr. Yuriy May who spent the early parts of his career training with the most skilled clinicians in cosmetic dentistry will tell you “with time, effort and consideration we can make your smile beautiful.”  Among his award-winning full mouth reconstruction cases, Dr. Yuriy May was selected Best Dentist in Connecticut in 2017 and is known to patients across the USA for anterior tooth replacements and natural smile makeovers. Natural Dentistry has mastered natural, beatiful smile makeovers and works with some of the top feldspathic veneer and crown labs in the industry.

See Dr. May’s Cosmetic Dentistry Cases Here or By Clicking On Each One Below:

Incredible depth, experience and breath of knowledge by Top Dental Veneer Dentist Dr. Yuriy May

So much goes into designing gorgeous smile enhancements with minimally-invasive dental veneers, most patients will have no idea that Dr. May spends hours of per full mouth case analyzing, planning, designing rendering mock up images, and modifying dental veneers until perfection is reached. An introduction to MANY the elements of exceptional dental veneer considerations:

1) Multiple Foundational Approaches

• Direct Veneer Method

• Indirect Method

2) Multiple Material Choices

• Composite Dental Veneer

• Porcelain Dental Veneer

• Lumineer Dental Veneer

3) Multiple Dental Veneer Preparation Techniques

• No prep

• Enamel contouring

• Traditional

4) Multiple Fabrication Techniques

• Pressed Dental Veneer Technique

• Cut-back Dental Veneer Technique

• Stacked Dental Veneer Technique

5) Multiple Dental Veneer Unit Design Elements

• Color of Dental Veneer (feldspathic vs monolithic)

• Translucency of Dental Veneer (light properties)

• Texture of Dental Veneer

• Strength & Durability of Dental Veneer

• Shape of Dental Veneer

• Proportions of Dental Veneer (relative to other teeth)

• Gingiva Margin of Dental Veneer

6) Multiple Dental Ceramist & Dental Lab Choices

• Basic Quality Dental Veneer Unit Per Tooth Cost – $350-$450 manufacturing lab price*

• Great Quality Dental Veneer Unit Per Tooth Cost – $500-$750 manufacturing lab price*

• Elite Quality Dental Veneer Unit Per Tooth Cost – $850-$1450 manufacturing lab price*

_{*This is the price Dr. May pays the lab ceramists to hand manufacture single dental veneer for every single tooth being enhanced. Dr. Yuriy May’s cost per veneer is found on this table here}

Why is Cosmetic Dentistry so popular now vs 25 years ago?

Although it was always the objective of dentists to restore teeth to their natural and esthetically optimal form, treating the dentition for purely esthetic reasons began to develop and evolve in the 1970s with the discovery of both enamel and dentin bonding agents and the ability to etch porcelain. The cosmetic dentist’s knowledge of the relationship between the craniofacial structure, facial proportion, dentofacial proportion, gingival tissues, teeth, and the perioral area as related to esthetics has vastly increased since this early beginning and over the 50 years of development, competition has emerged to allow the best cosmetic dentists and smile designers like Natural Dentistry’s Dr. May to win the hearts, smiles and minds of individuals in need of smile rehabilitation. The reality is few dentists, if any, can match naturally talented and exceptionally trained smile specialists like Dr. Yuriy May in his smile analysis, smile design and surgical skill in the dentofacial esthetic realm. Beginning in the early in the 1990s, the smile became an integral, if not the most critical part of the total facial complex. The esthetic appeal of a “Hollywood” smile started to surface as the most important asset to a patient’s overall looks and appeal, identifying the societal status and individual attractiveness. Without question, esthetic improvement procedures in facial dentistry are in high demand by the populace and include dentofacial esthetics (smile makeovers), plastic surgery, and dermatology (microneedling & PRF) which are within themselves a highly interdependent ecosystem. Cosmetic dentistry has grown tremendously from its inception for a number of reasons. Key driving forces for cosmetic enhancement include:

1. Media: Hollywood’s idolization of white, perfect, esthetic, symmetric and beautiful teeth
2. Aging: Age-related changes in an individual’s appearance
3. Health: Awareness of integrative and holistic health
4. Information: Access to information on the field of cosmetic dentistry and smile makeovers have flooded consumers to give them a leg up
5. Dentists: As more dentist recognize that Cosmetic Dentistry is a treasure to chase.

It is no wonder that Americans spend over $27 billion of dollars annually to attempt to improve their looks. Cultural differences aside, there are certain components of what is considered an attractive face that seems to be universal. Of the $27 billion, $17 billion is spent on dentistry and improving the smile.

Cosmetic Dentist Smile Makeover Costs in USA

Facial Esthetic & The Smile

Without question, there is an inherent dependency between the creation of both facial and dental esthetic components to create an individual’s unique beauty and appearance, with emphasis on the orofacial esthetic. Among many studied and published papers on the study of beauty, the definition of beauty is proven to be affected most by the dentofacial relationship to the patient’s overall appearance. Plainly stated, beauty cannot occur in the most gorgeous of human, without the proper optimal smile esthetics, while an individual with other suboptimal facial features can still be considered beautiful. The majority of the USA populace feels that a healthy, attractive smile is one of the most important social assets. A survey performed by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry revealed that more than 87% of adults feel that an unattractive smile can impede career success. In addition, 92% of the respondents said that an attractive smile is an important social asset.² In a population where 50% of individuals are unhappy with their smiles, addressing this concern is a matter of importance. Even young people of today have an opinion about what a nice smile demonstrates. Another Social Study: Teenage girls in the United Kingdom were asked to assess models in girl magazines. Models that appeared to be “cool” and “desirable” were deemed not to need orthodontic treatment.³ Although the dentist is the person that will deliver the restorative treatment, Dr. May firmly believes it is the responsibility of all health-care professionals who practice cosmetic procedures to recognize of craniofacial and dentofacial esthetics when rehabilitating, rejuvenating and enhancing an individual’s overall appearance.

The Face – Our Primary Representation of SELF To the World

Although we are admonished “don’t judge a book by its cover”, we repeatedly defy that warning as we go about our daily lives responding to people on the basis of their facial appearance.⁽²⁾ The findings fall in line with the ecological theory which states that facial qualities are useful in guiding adaptive behavior in others (and is often accurate). The results of a study from “Why Appearance Matters” are conclusive:

1. We form first impressions from faces despite warnings not to do so.
2. People’s faces provide adaptive information about the social interaction opportunities⁽³⁾
3. People’s faces provide adaptive perception of the individual’s perceived traits (their character, who they are)
4. Ecological theory assumes that our perceptions of faces, both trained and social interaction will often be accurate because they are learned (aka adaptive)

No one should feel guilty. Generalizing, or “overgeneralization” across faces is just one instance of the broader cognitive mechanism of stimulus generalization that is essential for adaptive behavior (aka survival). The world would be quite overwhelming if we had no expectations about our social and non-social environment because we failed to generalize from known cases to similar unknown ones. Regardless of cultural or temporal differences, the face is ordinarily the first thing that people (Dr. May included) see when we come upon another person. We then use that experience to form our initial impression of the person. That very first critical impression, the visualization of an individual’s facial appearance, is the very focal point of an individual since it is usually the most exposed body part and our reptilian brains use the information of facial appearance to quickly formulate and extrapolate an opinion. In other words, 87% of the subjective interpretation of a person’s substance is generated from an instantaneous judgment from their face. For example, good-looking individuals are assumed to be more intelligent, have better personalities, and to be sexually warmer than those who are not. This phenomenon, although not universally accepted, is frequently referred to as the ‘halo effect.’ The opposite can also be experienced. The negative halo effect refers to an unfavorable impression that is attached to those less attractive.

Elements that Define Facial Beauty & Optimal Esthetics

According to David Perrett, Professor of Psychology at University of St. Andrews and head of the Perception Lab in Scotland, the attributes of an attractive face can be divided into two categories:

1. absolute conditions of physical preferences
2. relative conditions of physical preferences

Absolute conditions apply to everyone. For example, these may include the horizontal symmetry, how close the face is to aesthetic ideals and what emotions and expressions the face presents, etc. On the other hand, the relative conditions may included similarity (resemblance), difference, and discrepancy of beliefs, etc. These relative conditions result in different preferences of beauty among individuals. Four conditions of beauty that major theories on facial attractiveness have in common are;

1. youthful appearance
2. horizontal symmetry
3. balanced and ideal proportions
4. facial features/characteristics fitting the age and sex

The 5th is positive emotions and bright, happy countenances, which Perrett believes complete the absolute conditions of beauty. In other words, the ideal cephalometric proportions and balance, rather than the golden ratio, may create individual beauty.

Citations & Sources

(1) Journal Vision Research Universitsy of Tornto, University of California San Diego

(2) Zebrowitz, L. A., & Montepare, J. M. (2008). Social Psychological Face Perception: Why Appearance Matters. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(3), 1497. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1600-0544.2002.01121.x

(3) Gibson JJ.  The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1979.

(4) Zebrowitz LA, Montepare JM. The ecological approach to person perception: Evolutionary roots and contemporary offshoots. In: Schaller M, Simpson JA, Kenrick DT, editors. Evolution and Social Psychology. New York: Psychology Press; 2006. pp. 81–113

(5) Bruce V, Young A. Understanding face recognition. British Journal of Psychology. 1986;77(3):305–327.  [PubMed]