Aside from brushing your teeth twice a day and limiting the intake of sugar, here are a few tips you can use to take better care of your dental health.
- When we consume food, a mixture of bacteria, their acids, and sticky byproducts stick to the teeth. While it causes no damage immediately after formation, but after a few hours, it can start to dissolve the mineral out of the teeth, creating microscopic holes on the teeth. Over time, these microscopic holes can turn into visible cavities.
- By brushing twice daily, and taking two full minutes to brush, you can avoid these consequences and eat to your heart’s content! An electric toothbrush and a smaller brush can help reach tricky areas in your mouth. Medium-textures bristles will help clean your teeth without causing damage on your gum.
- Using toothpaste with a fluoride concentration of 1350-1500 ppm guarantees maximum protection for your teeth. Be sure to check the ingredients to see the amount of fluoride in your toothpaste. Fluoride can help replace the lost minerals in your teeth. Sometimes, dentists may prescribe a toothpaste with a higher concentration of fluoride for children, because most toothpaste made for children may have a lower amount of fluoride in them.
- Disclosing tablets, sold in supermarkets and pharmacies, can make plaque more visible and help you to identify places you may have missed while brushing.
- At night, our mouth produces less saliva than daytime, so our teeth are more vulnerable to plaque. Avoid eating or drinking anything besides water after brushing your teeth at night, and do not use mouthwash or rinse your mouth, because you will rinse away the fluoride!
- One important tip to keep in mind is to limit the amount of sugar you consume every day. While fruit contains intrinsic sugars which are less likely to cause harm to your teeth, free sugars found in manufactured foods, and also in honey, syrup and fruit juices, can cause great harm to your teeth.
- It is recommended you consume no more than 30g free sugar (or about 8 teaspoons) per day.
- Typically, your teeth can be exposed to four sugar intake episodes per day without any damage. These sugars can be anything, ranging from coffee to simple snacks like biscuits and etc.
Overall, with the help of these tips, and using a fluoride toothpaste and with the remineralizing effects of your own saliva, you can greatly reduce the number of the visits you have to take to the dentist!