4 Ways You're Doing Dental Hygiene Wrong

Dental hygiene is the routine that keeps your teeth, gums, and entire mouth healthy and clean in order to prevent disease. Oral health is an essential part of everyday life, and it only takes minutes each day to protect these vital parts of your body.

Flossing

While flossing regularly is important, it has recently been found that people have been flossing too often or too vigorously. Doing so wears both at your enamel and at your gum line. The new recommendation is to floss once a day, though it’s generally gentler to use a water flosser. These use jets of water to expel food from between your teeth, rather than rubbing a waxy string through. Most brands work well at this, but you can speak to your dentist about their preferred brand as, odds are, they’re already using a water flosser themselves.

Brushing

You should change out the toothbrush when the bristles get frayed or bent. This typically means once every three months, though if your brush is wearing out sooner, you may be brushing too hard. Brushing too hard, just like with overly-vigorous flossing, can wear at your enamel and your gumline. This causes tooth sensitivity and receding gums. To protect your dental health, it’s important that you brush gently and not crush your bristles against your teeth.

When You Brush

While it is important to brush regularly, many people are brushing at the wrong time to get the best health benefits. If you brush within 30-minutes of your last meal, then you are brushing at a time when your enamel is softest from the acid in your saliva that is generated while eating. To protect your teeth after meals, swish some water around in your mouth to remove acid, then brush once in the evening and once when you wake up. Doing so removes the food particles from that day and the dead cells that build up in your mouth while you sleep.

Remineralization

Your teeth, like any part of your body, are alive. That being said, they need certain nutrients to stay alive and even to heal themselves. If you are experiencing tooth sensitivity, brushing more frequently will only make it worse. What you need to do is help your teeth remineralize with remineralizing tooth powders. Eating yogurt has also been said to help with remineralization, but allowing sugar to settle on your teeth blocks the remineralization process, so Greek yogurt would be best in that case. You can also speak to your dentist about ways to speed up remineralization and help prevent cavities from forming.

Tooth enamel is the human body's hardest structure, but it still needs to be taken care of on a daily basis. Untreated cavities cause pain, difficulty concentrating, absence from school or work, and poor appearance that keeps a person from smiling. All of those problems greatly affect one's quality of life, so make sure to take good care of your oral health.