SARAH VINE: My teeth were, quite frankly, a mess. It's taken nine months and thousands of pounds but now I have gleaming, anti-ageing gnashers - and cured my fear of the dentist

Sipping a large glass of iced rosé in a friend’s garden during the most recent heatwave, she suddenly leaned over and fixed me with a glint in her eye. ‘Have you had your lips done?’ she asked, in a conspiratorial fashion. I laughed. ‘Go on, tell me,’ she insisted. ‘Is it filler? One of those “lip flips”?’ ‘None of the above,’ I replied, taking a sip. She eyed me suspiciously. ‘But you’ve had something done,’ she said. ‘Your face looks different. Your jawline’s tighter, your lips look fuller. Go on, you have to tell me. And I want their number!’ She was right, of course. I have had some ‘work’ done. But it’s not the lips, or the cheeks, and it doesn’t involve knives or filler. Although there were quite a lot of rather unpleasant needles. It’s my teeth. I’ve had my teeth done. And not just done, completely rebuilt, pretty much from the roots up. The entire internal scaffolding of my mouth has been painstakingly reconstructed using the latest 3D scanning technology and countless other cutting-edge techniques. At the age of 59, and after years of night-time tooth-grinding and endless crowns, fillings, bridges, implants and even, at one point, a bone graft, my teeth were, to coin a phrase, no longer fit for purpose. Sure, they looked OK to the eye, thanks to some veneers I had done some 15 years ago. But drill beneath the surface (literally) and they were a mess. Dr Edward Li inspects his work at Sarah Vine's dental appointment to reconstruct her teeth Sarah's teeth had been grey since her 40s – but she has now had her smile completely rebuilt at the age of 59 Despite my best efforts with the floss, I was plagued with gingivitis due to old and cracked fillings and crowns. Worst of all, the annoying click that I’d had for years in my jaw had become much worse and very painful. Sometimes it would get so bad that my jaw would briefly lock in place, which was not only agony but also highly disconcerting. In the mornings, I would wake up with it sore and inflamed from grinding, and have to take an ibuprofen just to calm things down. Two years ago, I had Botox in my masseter muscles to try to minimise the problem – and that helped, to an extent, but it only lasts a few months. And my whole mouth and jaw felt out of kilter, and so I decided it was time to act. I’ve always had bad teeth. Not in the wonky, needing braces kind of bad – in fact, aesthetically they were always quite decent; but more in the sense that they were weak from a very young age. My father was the same, and my brother, too, so maybe there’s a genetic element. Either way, no amount of oral hygiene seemed to really make much difference, with the result that by my early 20s, I already had a mouth full of fillings. This naturally led to a phobia of dentists, since every visit inevitably resulted in a lot of pain, both physical and financial. Anyone who is scared of the dentist’s chair will recognise the cycle of denial: fear leads to avoidance, avoidance leads to infection, infection leads to intervention, intervention leads to more fear – and so on. Not all the work was of the highest standard, either: in the 1980s and 1990s there were a fair few cowboys around, especially in Italy, where I grew up. Things were so bad that one dentist I visited in my late 20s actually asked me if he could use me as a case study for his students (he was also a lecturer). I was 28, but I had the mouth of a 78-year-old, he said. If I thought that was bad, things were about to get a lot worse: pregnancy. Even people with healthy teeth suffer during pregnancy. Each baby takes a tooth, the old wives’ tale goes. By my mid-40s they were looking worn down and grey, almost transparent where the enamel had eroded. That was the last time I had any serious dental work done, including a bone graft due to a nasty infection which had sneaked into an old root canal and gradually eaten away, undetected, at my gum. By the time I noticed something was wrong, it had destroyed a lot of the surrounding bone and teeth, hence the need for a graft before an implant to replace the lost teeth. It was honestly the most painful and unpleasant experience of my entire life, and I’ve given birth twice. Back then, I was advised to have all my old crowns and fillings removed and replaced – but it was just too costly. And so it was that last year, having had an extraction and risking another, I decided the time had come to finally grasp the nettle. The cost would be several thousands of pounds but I had some savings, and I decided to invest them in my teeth. Some might have bought a new car, or gone on a swanky holiday, or done a kitchen extension. But what use are those things if you are falling apart at the seams? After all, I turn 60 next year, and assuming nothing terrible happens, I’m likely to be around for a few more years. And I will need teeth. Plus, tooth decay is very much linked to heart disease – and since pretty much everyone in my family seems to bow out with either a heart attack or a stroke (perhaps precisely because we all have such terrible teeth), I am acutely mindful of this risk. All these factors, exacerbated by the painful jaw-locking, were what led me to London dentist Dr Edward Li. Sarah's teeth before treatment, which would cost several thousands of pounds and take nine months ... and transformed after the dentist installed permanent veneers which helped to improve her chewing and reduce pain Disconcertingly young and irrepressibly enthusiastic about his craft, he combines the energy of a schoolboy with the skill and precision of one much older. Best of all, there was none of that tut-tutting and sucking of teeth that usually happens when I have my mouth examined: he is as gentle and non-judgmental as a Buddhist monk. He’s also a massive geek. He has all the gadgets, from the 3D scanner that maps and probes every inch of my mouth, turning it into the oral equivalent of an Ordnance Survey map, to the whatchamacallit electrotherapy thing that helps calm your nerves. It’s this that finally quashes my fear of the dentist chair. Small clips are placed on each of your earlobes, through which electrical and sound frequencies are transmitted to your brain triggering the release of dopamine and serotonin, the body’s feel-good chemical messengers. The result is the sort of deep relaxation that leaves you unfazed by all manner of scary-looking implements and procedures. Dr Edward’s plan is to strip back my mouth to the raw bone, as it were, removing all the ancient fillings, cracked crowns and a wonky bridge – and then reconstruct the whole thing. As my teeth have worn down over time, my lower jaw is sinking into my skull, putting pressure on my joints and causing inflammation. The whole internal geography of my mouth is uneven, hence the clicking and catching on one side. Mapping it all out with the 3D scanner on a big screen, Dr Edward explains how he will increase the height of my teeth to correct my bite. Not only will this soothe my aching jaw, over time it will also result in a firmer jawline and more youthful appearance overall. The treatment will take place across four sessions, at a distance of a month to six weeks between each session. He will clear out the top teeth first, install temporaries, send the scans off to the lab to have the veneers made; then I will have a second appointment to remove the temporaries and install the permanent porcelains. The same process goes for the bottom teeth. At the end of it all he will make me a mouth guard to wear at night for my grinding – to make sure that all his hard work (and my hard-earned money) doesn’t go to waste. First things first, though: a visit to the hygienist. If you have sensitive gums like me, you’ll know that this can feel like torture – but Dr Edward is not a sadist. I am fully numbed for this, meaning my teeth can be properly cleaned and descaled and my gums settled before the real work begins. I cannot tell a lie: the first session is pretty gruelling. Dr Edward works fast, and he is a dab hand with the old Novocain; still, four hours in the dentist’s chair are not for the fainthearted, not when you are having every last nook and cranny thoroughly excavated. I put my headphones in and do my best to drift off into an audiobook while the drill whirrs away – but by the end of it I am a bit of a nervous wreck. Dr Edward, by contrast, is delighted with his handiwork. He shows me pictures of my teeth in their natural state (irksome) and then explains in great detail what he has done: cleaned out all the old fillings, unscrewed the bridge, removed any decay along the way. I feel like an antique that has undergone extensive renovations. One of the great things about modern dentistry is that the techniques, tools and materials have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. Everything is just so much more efficient, so much more precise – and pain-free. Take the temporaries Dr Edward installs, for example. They are modelled on a 3D mould mapped by the computer – and so they fit perfectly with very little adjustment. They also look fantastic, if a bit too white. But, Dr Edward assures me, that’s because they have to last six weeks and they will fade. I am keen for the permanent fixtures not to be too bright – I don’t want to look like I’ve got Turkey teeth, and he agrees. In fact, this is his speciality: delivering understated results and subtle improvements that aren’t immediately obvious. Besides, I am no spring chicken: I would look silly with bright white teenager teeth. The actual colour he chooses looks quite yellow on its own – but when he holds it up to my mouth it looks very different, white but very natural. Weeks pass, and it’s time for the first instalment of the permanent veneers. Once again, I have a full dental block, anesthetising the area to be worked on, and then Dr Edward sets about drilling off the temporaries. The results are both aesthetic and functional: my teeth don’t just look better, they are also far healthier, writes Sarah Vine This appointment is much more pleasant than the first one, albeit still a good four hours in the chair. But generally much less jarring – and ultimately more rewarding as I get to see the half-way results. When he finally holds up the mirror, I am elated. The teeth are a fraction longer in length, but it’s very subtle, and only I can tell as my bite feels different. Slightly dazed but delighted, I toddle out into the West End. Despite the fact that only my top teeth have been done, I begin to feel the results of my new internal scaffolding almost immediately. Chewing becomes easier, and the nagging pain in my jaw starts to fade. Over the course of the next three months, we repeat the process on the bottom teeth. All in all, the whole treatment has taken the best part of nine months. Many women my age spend small fortunes on facelifts and other cosmetic treatments. And this whole process has not been cheap, not by any means. But in many ways, I feel it’s a sounder investment than a straightforward cosmetic procedure, and one that will stand me in good stead for longer. The results are both aesthetic and functional: my teeth don’t just look better, they are also far healthier. My gum disease has gone and I no longer dread visits to the hygienist. I also know there are no nasties lurking beneath old fillings – and all the lead that was in my head has been removed. Appearance-wise, my jawline has indeed regained some of its definition, as Dr Edward said it would, and the fact that my lower jaw is supported internally by my bite and no longer sinking into my skull has totally resolved the joint pain and annoying click. This alone has dramatically improved my quality of life, since I no longer wake up with a sore jaw and a headache. Obviously, I will continue to age, as we all must. But hopefully I am now less likely to keel over from a heart attack as a result of my crumbling teeth. Who knows: one day I may even be able to say that I’m a 78-year-old with the teeth of a 28-year-old. Now wouldn’t that be something?