The Benefits 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.

Apart from the fact that our teeth plays a major role to our survival, they also contribute to our appearances, yellow, stained teeth are not a pretty sight. To restore your teeth to their natural colour you could choose laser teeth whitening.

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.

Regular visits to the dentist is important to our oral health because if there is a problem with our teeth the dentist will detect them and put them right before progressing any further, a dentist can also give good oral hygiene advice.

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.

Our saliva plays a major role in neutralising the acids responsible for dissolving the enamel which leads to tooth decay, therefore an increase in your saliva flow is good.

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.

Some foods that are not very good for our teeth include, sugar, cooked starches which include potato chips and crisps, food rich in carbohydrates, table sugar (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. As mentioned earlier a quick way to remove stains, including smoking stains is a laser teeth whitening treatment.

As previously mentioned the benefits of having a good flow of saliva, smoking doesn't help as it reduces the production of saliva therefore leading to all kinds of problems like gum disease, decay and possible loss of teeth.

If you develop any infections or diseases to the gums while smoking healing can be delayed as smoking narrows strictens the blood vessels, reducing the flow of blood to the gums.

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