Oral Hygiene Tips

Five Tips to Help You Improve Your Oral Health

TIP #1: A good diet is more important than great brushing and flossing

Cavities and gum disease are both caused by plaque build-up on the teeth. The best way to eliminate plaque is by reducing or eliminating foods and drinks that cause it in the first place. Big offenders are soft drinks, energy drinks, sweet tea, juice, milk, and any starchy or sugary snacks like cookies, crackers, candy bars and potato chips.

TIP #2: Drinking tap water is good for your teeth

Water is good because it replaces sugary drinks in your diet, and tap water tends to be even better because there is typically a small amount of fluoride in the water. This is particularly helpful for young children, because the fluoride gets incorporated into their growing teeth, but it is also useful for adults because a small amount of fluoride in the diet will express itself in the saliva, which constantly washes over the teeth during the day.

TIP #3: Floss

An excellent flosser can eliminate almost all plaque from their teeth with floss. Plaque accumulates everywhere on the teeth, but natural processes (like talking, cleaning your teeth with your tongue, saliva flow, chewing) tend to clean the plaque off certain areas of the teeth naturally. The areas of the teeth where these natural processes aren’t effective are the in-between surfaces of the teeth (where floss is particularly effective) and also along the gums on the front surfaces of the teeth.

TIP #4: Be aware of systemic problems that affect your oral health

Here are a few things that can affect your oral health that many people do not realize:

TIP #5: Regular dental cleanings can catch issues before they get out of hand

The most important things we can do for you at your dental cleaning are to catch any oral health issues before they become major issues. We also clean any tartar (a.k.a. calculus) build-up, which cannot be cleaned with regular brushing or flossing. Cleaning plaque off the teeth is not an important function of a regular dental visit, because plaque comes back very quickly (within a day). We will help to educate you to make sure that you can control the plaque yourself.