Brushing Up Your Dental Regime

A good dental regime can keep your teeth healthier, warding off oral diseases. It can also you’re your teeth and white and give you a winning smile long into old age. Most of us understand that regularly brushing can help keep our teeth healthy, but what are some of the other methods we should be using? Here are some of the major one that many of us neglect.

Protect your mouth, not just your teeth

Your teeth aren’t the only part of your dental hygiene that you should be paying attention to. Your tongue and gums regularly build up bacteria too and these too should be brushed. Tongue scrapers can also be used to clean your tongue. On top of brushing, you can use mouthwash every morning to cleanse your mouth. Not only is this great for keeping your oral zone healthier, it will also keep your breath smelling fresh.

Change your brush

You should change your toothbrush (or brush-head) ideally every three months. After this period, bristles will have started to fray and your brush won’t be nearly as effective to use. It’s also useful to swap out your toothbrush after you’ve been ill to stop yourself falling sick again. Whilst brushes will clean your teeth, they do not get rid of bacteria.

Chew gum between meals

You can prevent plaque from building up throughout the day by chewing gum between meals. Whilst no-where near as effective as a toothbrush, gum is still a great method of cleansing your palette and cleaning out your mouth. You can even buy specialist dental gum. Make sure that any gum you do chew is sugar-free to get the cleaning effect of it.

Book regular dental check-ups

Regularly seeing a dentist like this Dentist in Hartford can help you to maintain good oral hygiene. Dentists can clean out plaque that his built up and catch oral infections early in the bud (they can even check your mouth for oral cancer). Some people develop a fear of dentists, usually from painful procedures. There are many services out there that can help you to overcome dental anxiety. Meanwhile, if you have trouble travelling to a dental surgery, there are dentists out there that can provide home visits.

Limit sugar and alcohol

Your diet has a major effect on your dental hygiene – the two biggest culprits being sugar and alcohol. Sugar is most damaging through juices and fizzy drinks. You’re best limiting such drinks to having with meals. This also applies to drinks that claim to be sugar-free and use alternative sweeteners – some of these have been found to be healthier for your body than sugar, but not necessarily healthier for your teeth. When drinking alcohol, just make sure that you thoroughly brush your teeth that night. Neglect to brush your teeth that evening and the alcohol will continue to corrode your enamel overnight. On a side note, smoking is also very bad for your oral hygiene as you may know. If you can’t quit, cutting down and chewing gum after each cigarette is your best option.