Visiting the dentist only when your teeth hurt is about as good a strategy as sticking your head in the sand. The main reason is that the outer covering of your teeth, the enamel and the dentin underneath, have no nerves in them. So your teeth could be decaying and you wouldn’t feel it until the infection reaches the live inner core of the tooth. When that happens, and the inside of your tooth is infected, it is no longer possible to simply fill the cavity. That would be like sealing the infection inside a bottle. At that point the dentist has to do a root canal, whereby the infected core is removed and the tooth covered by a crown, which is much more expensive than a simple filling. By seeing your dentist regularly, cavities and other problems can be caught early. Like other health problems, and darning socks, a stitch in time saves nine. That is, it is easier and much cheaper to solve some problems early, rather than wait. – ProDentalFx, LLC