7 good habits for dental health

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Simple steps to help you maintain a beautiful smile.

1. Drink plenty of water

This is useful because when drinking water, the body is flushed and self-purified. Dehydration results in a lack of saliva, which washes the mouth, helping to clear plaque from the teeth.

2. Drink soda and fresh juices through a straw

If you like sodas and fresh juices, it is best to drink them through a straw as they are acidic enough. The tube helps to protect the teeth from its effects. It is also best to rinse your mouth with clean water after drinking these beverages.

Soda contains phosphoric acid. This substance deprives the enamel of the minerals that give it its strength. After exposure to acid, micropores appear in the enamel, it becomes like a porous sponge, into which pathogenic microbes and bacteria easily penetrate.

Carbonated drinks are also very high in sugar. For example, a glass of Pepsi contains about 5-6 tablespoons. To assimilate sugar, the body needs calcium and B-group vitamins. He takes these substances from the tissues of the teeth. Therefore, they are destroyed by an excess of sweets.

Soda is one of the most harmful foods due to the combination of phosphoric acid and sugar.

As for freshly squeezed juices, they have a very high level of acidity, so they cause demineralization of the enamel.

3. Give up diets

Food should be complete and contain proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals necessary for the body, such as calcium, which is needed for dental health. At the beginning of the 20th century, Manuil Pevzner, a professor, one of the founders of the Institute of Nutrition, the founder of dietetics and the creator of a system of therapeutic diets that is relevant to this day, argued this. He wrote about this in the works "Fundamentals of Dietetics and Dietetics" (1927), "Rational and Medical Nutrition" (1935), "Fundamentals of Medical Nutrition".

The diet can only be prescribed by the attending physician!

Internet diets for weight loss limit the amount of nutrients and vitamins. Long-term mono-diets are harmful for this very reason. It is better to stick to a healthy diet that includes fresh vegetables and fruits, protein foods, and fiber.

You can reduce your carbohydrate intake. They contain a lot of sugars, which are a breeding ground for bacteria and contribute to tooth decay. The same applies to sweets: the less you eat, the lower your risk of tooth decay.

4. Avoid sharp contrast between cold and hot

If you leave a warm room in the cold and start talking, your teeth are at increased risk. When cold air hits their surface, enamel cracks appear. The temperature in the oral cavity is 36.6 ° C, and outside it is much lower. Enamel cracks from such a sharp temperature drop, as it is similar to glass: strong but fragile.

The same applies to some culinary traditions: drinking coffee with ice water, eating hot strudel or coffee with ice cream. Until a certain point, you will not even notice cracks on the enamel, as this is asymptomatic. But, for example, in smokers, cracks increase over time, nicotine stains them, yellow and brown stripes appear on the teeth.

5. Eat solid food

It is especially beneficial to chew apples, carrots, and similar foods during childhood. Solid food puts pressure on dental tissue and promotes teething. If the parents rub the child all the hard fruits and vegetables in porridge and puree, then there is no load on the dentoalveolar apparatus. As a result, the period for the eruption of molars and the resorption of milk roots is shifted. There is even a risk of occlusion problems.

For adults, solid food is also important. It is a kind of physical education for the periodontal vessels - the tissues that surround the tooth and hold it in place. Chewing hard vegetables and fruits prevents periodontal atrophy, helps self-cleaning teeth and increases the load on the ligamentous apparatus of the teeth, which is also necessary for their health.

6. Avoid mechanical damage

Many gnaw seeds with their teeth, but this is fraught with the appearance of wedge-shaped defects on the cutting surface of the teeth - loss of a tooth in the form of a wedge due to increased abrasion.

Do not open bottles, cans, plastic lids with your teeth. Because of this, enamel chips appear. The situation can be corrected only with the help of a dentist, because the enamel will not grow. It is necessary to close the chip with a filling so that caries does not form.

Do not chew on metal spoons and forks. It is better to get rid of the habit of chewing on the handles, the temples of the glasses.

7. Use rinses, floss, irrigator

Rinse aids

Rinses are useful because they penetrate the gaps between teeth that cannot be reached with a brush. When brushing, plaque remains where the teeth are in close contact with each other. Because rinses contain plaque-breaking surfactants, they help clean teeth in hard-to-reach areas.

There are rinse aids with various additives. For sensitive teeth, there are potassium ion rinses that seal the dentinal tubules and reduce sensitivity. Eat with peptin complexes, such as mumiyo, for gum health, which relieve inflammation. There are mouthwashes with substances that suppress anaerobic bacteria that cause bad breath.

The smell comes from bacteria that live on the root of the tongue and produce hydrogen sulfide.

Antibacterial mouth rinses in combination with a special tongue brush will help get rid of the smell. It cleans it from surface bacteria and dead epithelium.

You should not abuse antibacterial rinses: they can cause dysbiosis, since together with pathogenic microflora they destroy the useful one. This can lead to candidiasis - a fungal infection. If the doctor prescribes chlorhexidine or metronidazole, these drugs need to be used strictly for the prescribed time, no longer.

Floss

If food gets stuck between the teeth, it means that the density of dental contacts is impaired, which contributes to the development of gum disease as a result of chronic injury. Due to exposure to food debris, inflammation appears, which provokes the appearance of periodontal pockets - areas where the gum is not attached to the tooth. Because of this, the teeth are loosened. Therefore, it is better to check with your dentist for cavities where food accumulates.

Dental floss removes food debris. It should click between the teeth to indicate good dental contact. Behind the equators of the teeth is the gingival triangle, where the gingival papilla is located. If the thread passes without clicking, food debris will injure this papilla. This is why floss should be used with care so as not to damage the gums.

This should be done in the morning and evening after brushing your teeth or in the middle of the day after eating fibrous foods such as meat or mangoes. The thread should be inserted tightly into the interdental space and guided over the tooth. Toothpicks are best avoided. They damage the gums and cause inflammation. In some cases, dentists even have to remove shards of toothpicks from the gums.

Irrigator

The irrigator is a modern alternative to floss. This is a device that washes the interdental spaces with a thin stream of water, cleansing them of plaque and food debris, performs micro-massage of the gums and helps prevent periodontitis and gum prolapse.

With age, small capillaries in the gums close. It atrophies due to lack of nutrition and shrinks in size. The necks of the teeth, which were previously hidden by the gum, begin to be exposed, the formation of wedge-shaped defects. The irrigator successfully tackles these problems. It should be used in the morning and evening after brushing your teeth.