My dentist says I should be more concerned about the wear of my teeth. I can see a lot of tiny crack lines in my front and I’ve broken a couple of teeth in the back. How do I know if or when it needs to be treated in depth?

Wear can be as destructive as decay (or cavities). Unnatural wear is that which comes not from chewing but from other habits such as grinding, clenching, biting on foreign objects or chemical erosion from bulemia or acid reflux. Many times teeth will wear slowly and it may be interpreted as a normal part of the aging process. They get shorter and flatter and may start to overlap or shift. The danger in leaving teeth like this is they can chip or break easily and fixing them may be compromised as there can be very little tooth structure left to work with and the repaired part can’t be that strong. Ultimately, the solution may be to alleviate the wear issue and restore the worn teeth back to the dimension they originally had. Having these things treated as early as possible can save a lot of time and expense.