With new technology at their fingertips, Dentists may be over treating your teeth.

With increasingly sophisticated detection technology, dentists are finding — and treating — tooth abnormalities that may or may not develop into cavities. While some describe their efforts as a proactive strategy to protect patients from harm, critics say the procedures are unnecessary and painful, and are driving up the costs of care.

“A better approach is watchful waiting,” said Dr. James Bader, a research professor at the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry. “Examine it again in six months.”

A study reported in The Lancet makes it pretty clear that growing your own spare parts may be a real possibility in the near future!

Growing technology is allowing science to put stem cells hard at work growing those hip and knee joints that we’re wearing out as we age.

In a decade or so, people now clamoring for metal and ceramic replacement joints may instead be able to have a fully functional biological replacement — a joint grown within their own bodies to their specific physiology.

To date, researchers have successfully grown replacement shoulder joints in rabbits, using an implanted biological “scaffold” upon which new cartilage developed, according to a study reported in The Lancet.