subject: The Best Of Oral Hygiene [print this page] The Best Of Oral Hygiene The Best Of Oral Hygiene
Our teeth are very important to our life style, it is the first stage of the digestive system. Chewing of our food is also known as mastication, to make it easier to swallow the food is mixed with saliva.
Not only do our teeth assist with the digestion of our food, they also add to our looks, so adopting a oral hygiene practise will help maintain their whightness, still you can become stained due to the foods we eat. In certain cases when stains cannot be remove, laser teeth whitening might be the solution.
We need to keep our teeth healthy and making sure that we adapt to a good oral hygiene system is important, brushing our teeth for a couple of minutes twice a day is needed, however do take care not to brush to hard as this could damage your gums and wear the teeth.
When we brush our teeth it removes plaque which is a soft sticky substance made up of bacteria and food debris, if this plaque is not removed it will form into a hard yellowish substance that is impossible to remove with a tooth brush therefore a visit to the dentist is needed, however if this calculus is not removed it will start to move below the gum line, at this stage gingivitis will start to progress.
Calculus forming on the crown of the tooth is called supragingival calculus and calculus that progress beneath the gum margin is called subgingival calculus.
Plaque build up also starts the progression of tooth decay, Plaque bacteria turns sugar which is present in our food into acid which then dissolves away layers on the enamel.Its good to have regular dental visits, because any small problems you might have can be put right before they go to far, also good oral hygiene advice can be given.
A dentist can apply fissure sealants, which is a thin layer of composite filling material, which is placed in the groves of the molar teeth, this prevents food getting stuck in the main chewing teeth.There are some substances in saliva that plays part in neutralising the acids that dissolves the enamel which then cause caries (tooth decay), so the increase of saliva flow can help to keep our teeth clean.
Increasing your salvia flow can be helped with the consumption of certain foods such as milk and cheese which is rich in calcium, chewing sugar free gum and eating anything high in fibre, will help.
However there are foods that will not do our teeth any favours and these include, cooked starches, sugar, carbohydrate rich foods, sucrose, glucose and fructose maltose.
Smoking is a bad habit and it harms our body in so many ways. It also affects our oral health. We are most aware that smoking discolours our teeth, but probably unaware that it can be responsible for the loss of teeth. When smoking stains are difficult to remove, you can always opt to have a proffesional teeth whitening treatment done.
As mentioned above saliva plays an important part in cleaning our teeth to a certain extent, smoking reduces the flow of saliva preventing it from performing its job properly, which could lead to tooth decay, gum disease and possible tooth loss.
Smoking narrows the blood vessels in the gum restricting the blood flow, therefore any infections or disease to the gum is delayed in healing.
