Having a healthy mouth is the key to your overall health. According to the Mayo Clinic, bacteria in your mouth can easily make its way into your digestive and respiratory tracts. From there, it can cause other diseases throughout your body.
To maintain your overall health, you need to have a healthy mouth. Thankfully, it’s not hard if you follow these five tips.
1. Get dental implants to prevent bone loss
When you’re missing teeth, you’re prone to bone loss. The more teeth you’re missing, the more bone loss you’ll experience. You can prevent bone loss with dental implants.
An implant is better than a partial or dentures because it’s fitted directly onto a titanium post attached to your jaw bone. It looks and feels just like a real tooth and doesn’t fill your mouth with excessive material.
Losing bone in your jaw can cause problems with your remaining teeth, and distort your facial features. You can get a bone graft to fix bone loss, but you may want to consider dental implants if you’re missing several teeth.
With bone loss, you’ll probably need a bone graft for your implants, but implants can last for a lifetime with proper care. You’ll also regain your ability to eat and socialize without being embarrassed about your missing teeth.
Titanium implants are the best choice over ceramic because titanium will fuse with your bone in your jaw as it heals. Titanium is the most durable and more affordable option.
2. Embrace the basics
You can’t go wrong with brushing and flossing. If you don’t already have a daily and nightly routine, create one. Make it a point to brush and floss when you wake up and before you go to bed.
For an even healthier mouth, floss and brush after each meal. The longer food sits between your teeth, the more bacteria will form. You can prevent plaque and tartar by cleaning your mouth after every meal.
Did you know that gently brushing with a soft bristled brush is ideal? If you use a hard brush and too much pressure, you can actually ruin your enamel.
An electric toothbrush can do an even better job of brushing. There are also some new products on the market that will brush all of your upper or lower teeth at once, automatically, in ten seconds.
Although these automatic toothbrushes look cool, the jury is still out on these devices. At least for now, it’s hard to say whether these devices are equal to manually brushing your teeth. However, it only takes two minutes to manually brush your teeth, so an automatic toothbrush won’t save much time.
3. Eat hard food carefully (or avoid it altogether)
Sometimes hard food can chip a tooth. It’s hard to imagine a tooth just breaking after you bite into something, but it happens to thousands of people.
Eat hard foods cautiously, especially if you’ve already broken or chipped a tooth. Better yet, avoid chewing hard foods, especially hard candy.
4. Use mouthwash
Do you avoid mouthwash because you don’t think it makes a difference? Mouthwash really does help prevent bacteria from multiplying in your mouth. Mouth health is all about managing bacteria and not allowing it to multiply.
Mouthwash will kill harmful bacteria on contact, and if you swish enough, you’ll dislodge particles from between your teeth.
When bacteria multiply in your mouth, it forms a film over your teeth and eventually turns into plaque. From that point on, you’ll be susceptible to gum disease. Mouthwash can prevent these problems before they start.
5. Clean your partially-erupted wisdom teeth with a gum stimulator
If you haven’t had your wisdom teeth extracted, there’s a chance one or more have only partially erupted. Generally, if they’re done growing, you won’t feel any pain. However, partially erupted wisdom teeth create a pocket that collects food particles between the tooth and your gum.
The best way to clean this pocket is with a gum stimulator. A gum stimulator is a soft, semi-flexible rubber tip on a long handle. It’s about the same size as a toothbrush. People with gum disease use this tool to strengthen their gums.
A gum stimulator is also a great way to remove food from partially erupted wisdom teeth, and any other area where food gets stuck.
6. Get enough vitamins and minerals
Mineral deficiency can cause tooth decay and cavities. Teeth are alive, and you can remineralize your teeth and stop cavities in their tracks by consuming the proper nutrients.
Dental health is the foundation for health
If you want to get healthy, start by taking care of your teeth and mouth. Your overall health will always begin with a healthy mouth.
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