Oral health is something people only tend to pay attention to once it starts going wrong. By that time, years of bad habits & lack of awareness might have caused gum disease or tooth loss. It’s better to begin thoroughly taking care of your teeth and gums as young as possible, so you enjoy a healthy mouth for decades.
Seeking dental care for serious issues is fraught with pain, but it’s also a major blow to your confidence. That said, once you know how — it’s easy to take care of your oral hygiene.
The Importance of Oral Health
It’s difficult to overstate how much value we place on our mouth as a means of communication — and not just for talking. Between six and eight weeks old, a baby first expresses warmth to their caregiver through a smile. It’s damaging to your self-esteem when you feel like this essential aspect of yourself is defective or substandard.
Read on to find out why it’s so crucial that you follow a strict dental care routine and discover 10 tips for excellent oral health.
Ensure You Seek Professional Dental Care Regularly
When it comes to check-ups, cleaning, and emergency care — you must visit the dentist. Most experts recommend that you attend at least twice a year to ensure your oral health is in good shape. However, there are some cosmetic procedures, such as teeth straightening, that a dentist might overcharge for.
Be sure to thoroughly research your options before paying over the odds for dental work that you could have done at home.
Adapt Your Lifestyle
Lifestyle plays a massive role in your oral health. If you don’t already have a dedicated routine to dental care, it’s time to implement one! You must brush your teeth at least twice a day. It’s also crucial that you consider cleaning between the teeth as part of the twice-daily brushing regimen, too.
Whether you use traditional tooth floss, and electric floss machine, or interdental brushes — cleaning this area can prevent the build-up of plaque. This sticky substance is a mixture of bacteria, leftover food, and saliva. When it calcifies, it turns into tartar, causing gum disease, bad breath, and a host of other oral health problems.
Why Is Sugar So Bad for Your Oral Health?
The main culprit in leftover food that causes plaque is sugar. It’s like a magnet for the harmful bacteria that live inside your mouth, which is why sweets directly lead to cavities. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of hidden sugar in people’s diets nowadays. If you at a lot of processed or premade food, check the label for sugar. Even low-fat items tend to be high in it, and it’s possibly the worst thing for your oral health.
What Is Gum Disease?
Many adults in the United States have periodontal disease to some extent. As we age, gums naturally start to recede and our teeth feel the effects of time. Gum disease is an inevitability due to the diet most of us have and the fact that not everyone brushes twice a day religiously. It starts as swelling of the gums — also known as gingivitis — but can progress to a severe bone disease if left untreated.
Bad breath is one of the most common signs of gum disease, along with a strange taste in the mouth.
Plaque and bacteria build up in hard to reach areas around the root of the tooth and in between gaps. This is part of the reason why you must ensure your teeth are straight as well as clean for excellent oral health. Wonky teeth give bacteria more space to breed, which can increase the risk of gum disease.
Are Oral Health and Confidence Linked?
Another reason why you should be proud to maintain excellent oral health is that it’s directly linked to confidence. We’re harsh critics of ourselves, and if we judge our teeth to be anything but perfect, it can affect how we behave socially. A smile is one of the primary ways we interact, and people who are self-conscious of their mouths are less likely to interact altogether.
When you take care of your smile, you feel fantastic and make a great first impression on everyone you meet.
Teeth Straightening At Home
Instead of turning to the dentist for teeth straightening, you can get invisible braces that you slip in yourself. This state-of-the-art technology negates the need for the dentist and lets you take care of this simple cosmetic procedure at home. Once your teeth are straight, there’s less chance of plaque retention and you’ll feel a million dollars each time you smile.
Top 10 Tips for Excellent Oral Health
Discover our expert tips on how to maintain excellent oral health with easy little changes to your lifestyle that make a big overall difference.
1. Drink Lots of Water
There’s nothing better for your overall health — and oral health — than water. Try to drink as much water as possible throughout the day. Additionally, some dentists recommend drinking water with each meal to help wash some of the sugar away.
2. Eat Fresh Crunchy Food!
The problem with eating a lot of convenience foods is that they don’t have the same benefit to your oral health as crunchy fruit and vegetables. Your jaw bone and tooth roots benefit from crunching on beautiful crisp fresh foods. Filling up on fresh food will keep your smile looking bright white and keep you looking trim and healthy, too.
3. Wear a Retainer During Sports
If you play any sports where there’s a risk of contact with a ball, person, or any kind of apparatus, consider wearing a mouthguard. Injuries to the teeth can result in chronic pain and changes to your appearance, so take precautions where necessary.
4. Use Mouthwash
Some mouthwash is explicitly made to prevent gum disease. It can be a useful part of the daily teeth brushing and flossing routine, providing an extra layer of defense against plaque and freshening breath. Bad breath is another aspect of poor oral health than can make you feel less confident and more inclined to hideaway.
5. Avoid Sugary Drinks — Including Alcohol
One of the reasons you should drink as much water as possible is to replace sugary drinks like soda, fruit juice, alcohol and sweet coffee. People often underestimate how much sugar and calories they have in a day because they don’t count the drinks. These add up and can seriously damage the enamel on your teeth.
Another downside of alcohol is that it tends to make people forget to brush their teeth or floss. Oral health is a great reason to moderate your intake, although everything is fine in moderation as long as you follow a strict dental care routine.
Fruit juice and smoothies are another major cause of plaque because people don’t realize quite how damaging the fructose in these drinks is. Fruit contains fresh sugar, which is slightly less damaging to the teeth than the sugar you find in drinks.
6. Brush At Least Twice a Day
Sadly, some people still neglect to brush their teeth in the evening. It’s vital that you brush before bed because plaque has time to build up overnight. Ideally, you should brush your teeth as possible after each meal that contains sugar or simple carbohydrates like white bread or pasta.
Even if you don’t go all out and brush and floss after each meal, make sure you do it twice a day, at the very least.
7. Never Use Teeth to Do Anything But Chew
Using your teeth to open bottles, packets, crack nuts, or do anything else other than eat food is a hazardous practice. While it might not chip or break your teeth on a one-off occasion, if you do it repeatedly, the chances of damage are high.
Practicing excellent oral health means being careful about what you eat and not taking any risks when it comes to dental care.
8. Eat Clean
As previously mentioned, a lot of processed food and junk food contains hidden sugar and trans fats. Sugar alone is terrible for your teeth, but the combination with trans fats makes food highly addictive.
People who eat foods high in these substances tend to eat more, which can accelerate tooth decay and gum disease. Although you might not notice under the age of 30, the effects soon catch up with you! That’s why eating healthy and taking care of your oral health shouldn’t be a fashion statement; it should be for your wellbeing now and in the future.
9. Use Interdental Brushes
Interdental brushes are an excellent alternative to flossing if you’re not a fan of that method. They come in different sizes for different mouth shapes and teeth sizes. These can help to clean the gum area in between the teeth, which is usually where gum disease starts.
10. Try Electric Flossing
Another alternative to traditional flossing or interdental brushes is an electric flosser. You use this to pass fast, targeted jets of water through the gaps between the teeth. It helps to eliminate the build-up of food and bacteria that leads to plaque — just like flossing, but some people might find it more convenient.
Straighten Teeth at Home
Everyone wants to have a dazzling smile that makes an attractive, self-assured first impression. Why not take the free assessment at ALIGNERCO to see if you’re eligible for our at-home teeth-straightening solution?
