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Dental Care – How to take care of your teeth every day

Dental care is part of oral hygiene and involves the removal of dental plaque from teeth with the intention of preventing cavities (dental caries), gingivitis, and periodontal disease. People routinely clean their own teeth by brushing and interdental cleaning and dental hygienists can remove hardened deposits (tartar) not removed by routine cleaning. Those with dentures and natural teeth may supplement their cleaning with a denture cleaner.

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Brush twice a day after meals

Teaching yourself and your kids to brush in a proper manner can go a long way to keep teeth in good health. Develop a habit of brushing each part of your teeth at least for a count of ten brush strokes. First, start with the outer surfaces of your upper teeth. Then go on to the outer surfaces of your lower teeth. Do the same for the inner surfaces. Finally, brush along the chewing surfaces of your teeth. Remember to brush along the gum line, the place where the gum joins the teeth. Keep your brushes at a 45-degree angle to the gum line with your toothbrush bristles pointing towards the teeth. It takes about two to five minutes to properly brush all your teeth. One simple way of ensuring that you or the kids brush for an adequate amount of time is to make it a habit to do it for the duration of one whole song on your music player.

Floss regularly

Our mouths are filled at all times with bacteria that are looking for places where they can deposit themselves and form a colony. One of the places that don’t get addressed by mere brushing is between the teeth. This is also where stuff like jam or peanut butter goes and deposits itself making these nooks and crannies all the more attractive to bacteria. Make sure that you floss on a daily basis to clean out these hard-to-reach places between your teeth.

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Use mouthwash

Antibacterial mouthwash can help fight bacterial build-up in your mouth to a very large extent. Fluoride-based mouthwashes also help in strengthening the teeth. The best time to rinse your mouth with mouthwash is just before going to bed, as it will protect your teeth and mouth all through the night. Make sure you teach the children how to rinse their mouth with mouthwash without swallowing it.

Schedule a visit to the dentist

Summers are a fun time. You may want to put off a dentist visit till later, but it is better that you schedule a visit now. Any potential damage that can be detected early will be helpful in preserving the lifelong health of your teeth. Cavities or plaque build-up that is left unattended can develop into serious problems. It is recommended that you have a thorough dental checkup once every six months.

Water is the drink of choice

As mentioned in my blog last week, the importance of water during a hot summer holiday is vital for our overall health but it also provides a vital role for our oral health too. We should avoid regular consumption of drinks with high sugar and acidic content such as sports drinks or fruit juices which increase the chance of dental decay and enamel erosion. A word of caution on drinking tap water abroad though, to reduce the risk of picking up a tummy bug, bottled water is probably the better option.

Limit your sugary foods

Our summer holidays are usually the time where we eat more excessively than usual, which more often than not, makes for a high-in-sugar diet. During the holidays we are more likely to “graze” but we must remember to keep this to a minimum. It is better for our teeth and general health to stick to three meals a day instead of having seven to ten of these “snack-attacks”, which can cause dental decay and erosion, the loss of tooth enamel, which if worn away the dentine underneath is exposed and your teeth can look discolored and become sensitive.

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Protect your lips

While basking in the sun, many of us will sensibly apply suntan lotion to protect ourselves against the sun’s rays, in a bid to help prevent such diseases as skin cancer but what many people fail to realize is the importance of protecting our lips. With the skin on our lips being thin and particularly vulnerable due to the lack of melanin, shielding our lips from the sun on holiday is essential as prolonged exposure could lead to forms of oral cancer.

Pack your dental first aid kit

This is a crucial piece of equipment to take on holiday. Often small and inexpensive, there are many dental first aid kits in the market and the majority of them contain everything you would need in a dental emergency. No matter how careful we are, accidents do happen so make sure you are prepared for any eventuality.

Regulate your alcohol consumption

It’s easy to get carried away, but there a certain holiday luxury that you should be particularly careful of – and one of these is alcohol. Regular consumption of sweet cocktails and fizzy alcoholic drinks can result in tooth decay…not exactly the holiday souvenir you were hoping for. And with alcohol being a leading cause of oral cancer we must make sure that we drink responsibly.

Take your spare dentures

This may come as a surprise but many sets of dentures are lost by their owners on holiday so taking a spare pair is always a good idea. Most dentures on holiday are lost through being sick, following a bout of seasickness or food poisoning for example, with the owner not realizing that their dentures have slipped out, more often than not either overboard, or down the toilet.

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