Dental Care
Part 3
This is the third part of our discussion of the topic “DENTAL CARE”.
Learn More About Oral Health Maintenance:
While undergoing a dental checkup, the dentist can tell you how to properly take care of your teeth. For example, he might tell you to floss first before brushing your teeth.
He might also instruct you on proper flossing, like needing to floss under the gums even if it leads to gum bleeding to really remove all food particles. He can also suggest diet changes, like eating less junk food or starchy, sweet food.
The idea here is to follow your dentist’s recommendations to ensure that you’re caring for your teeth, gums, and overall oral health the correct way.
Tartar, Tooth Decay, Cavities, and Plaque Prevention:
It usually begins with you not brushing your teeth enough to get rid of plaque. The plaque contains bacteria that eats all that filmy grossness and excretes acid onto the outer teeth shells (enamel).
This then results in tooth decay (compromised enamel) that develops holes (dental caries or cavities). Tartar (calculus) is when calcium deposits start forming around plaque, making them more difficult to remove.
You should floss then brush twice every day to lower your risk for plaque, tooth decay, cavities, and tartar when push comes to shove.
Oh No! You Missed a Spot… or Several Spots:
No matter how disciplined you are at flossing and brushing; you’re bound to miss certain areas of your mouth. Areas such as back molars can be hard to completely clean, leading to the devilish plaque to tartar cycle.
To avoid plaque buildup that wears away the protective teeth enamel and leads to toothache and gingivitis as well as serious complications like infection and tooth loss, it’s imperative that you get regular dental checkups.
Clear away any plaque and tartar you can’t remove by brushing alone with the assistance of a dentist doing in-office dental cleaning.
A dentist can do treatments like prophylaxis and deep cleaning to reach those hard-to-access spots of your mouth with special tools and expertise. Professional cleaning cleans up anything regular brushing and flossing can’t cover.
Cavity Treatment Can’t Be Done in a DIY Manner:
Once you develop those holes in your teeth, only your dentist can fix them. There are no over the counter (OTC) products you can use to plug those cavities up yourself!
They can do dental fillings on a tooth with a cavity or cavities so that it’d stop aching or getting food stuck inside it, leading to pain.
A dentist doesn’t only help reduce your risk for tooth decay and prevent oral health complications with dental inspections, x-rays, and in-office cleaning. You can also depend on them to detect and fix developing cavities.
*Only Dentists Can Do Tooth Decay and Cavity Treatment: Long story short, the dentist helps identify cavity locations and fix them up before they can worsen or lead to tooth loss.
They can either do a composite or amalgam filling on the tooth if the cavity is small enough. Some drilling might be required to make the filling stick. Otherwise, a bit of dental bonding or even inlay/onlay action might be called for!
A dental inlay is used for deep cavities while a dental onlay is for wide cavities. Your dentist might even elect to put a crown over your tooth or, if it’s infected, elect for a root canal treatment (endodontic treatment).