Prevention is better than a cure

The secret to good oral health is not really a secret at all, but something all dentists advocate. It basically involves brushing twice a day, flossing once a day, and visiting a dentist regularly, ideally quarterly for a profession clean.

This is just the bare minimum you should be doing if you want to avoid cavities and gum disease. However, dentists at Zental say there is so much more we could be doing in the name of preventive oral health. Adopting a holistic approach to preventing tooth decay will benefit not just your oral health, but keep your overall health and wellbeing in check too. Sounds like a win-win!

This article sheds light on some good and bad habits for your oral health and how simple preventive strategies could save you from a lot of trouble in the future. 

Essential Tips for Maintaining Healthy Teeth and Habits to Avoid

Oral health is a crucial aspect of our overall well-being, and it plays a significant role in maintaining our overall health. Good oral health is essential for our quality of life, and it can have a significant impact on our self-esteem, confidence, and overall well-being. Poor oral health, on the other hand, can lead to a range of problems, including tooth decay, gum disease, and even cardiovascular disease. By understanding the importance of oral health, we can take steps to maintain good oral hygiene practices and prevent oral health problems.

Avoid using abrasive chemicals like charcoal to clean teeth

While effective for whitening teeth, trendy charcoal-infused brushes and toothpastes yield results at a cost. Charcoal, being excessively abrasive, whitens your teeth by removing some of your enamel layer. While removing a small amount of enamel can have a temporary whitening effect, the lost enamel will cause your teeth to weaken over time, leading to staining, cracks, cavities and other serious problems.

Your body does not have the ability to regenerate enamel, meaning that once you lose the protective coating, it cannot grow back. For this reason, ‘anything you do that wears down your enamel is extremely harmful to the health of your teeth,’ says Dr Ihsaan Al-Hadad, Clinical Director at Zental. It is crucial to keep your teeth healthy by avoiding abrasive substances and focusing on preventative care.

Avoid consuming sports drinks, soda and flavoured coffee in excess

Residing inside our mouths are more than 700 species of bacteria, some helpful and some harmful. The bad bacteria break down sugars from foods and drinks we consume and turn them into acids, which, over time, can make your teeth lose essential minerals and lead to cavities.

If you have heard that candy rots your teeth or that an energy drink a day will erode your tooth enamel, it’s time you started rethinking your snack choices. These "treats" are bad for your teeth because they are loaded with sugar. If you are not careful about cleaning your teeth vigilantly, the bacteria then accumulate and form a soft light yellow film, or plaque, on the surface of your teeth. This layer then worsens that acidity and creates an ideal environment for even more bacteria to grow and multiply. If the dental plaque in your mouth grows and hardens, it can turn into tartar, or calculus, in dentist linguo, which can also irritate your gums and lead to gum disease.

Excess sugar intake also affects the composition and quality of your saliva, your mouth’s natural defence mechanism that washes away food debris and bacteria and protects the teeth and gums. Without a strong defence system, your oral environment becomes more prone to bacterial invasion and fostering disease. The bacteria feed on the sugar present in your mouth and release acid as a byproduct. That acid attacks your teeth and causes decay. 

In addition to being high in sugar, these drinks are also highly acidic – a quality that is detrimental to the health of your teeth. Even some sugar-free sodas are extremely acidic. Drinking several acidic drinks throughout the day can cause significant tooth erosion and result in the loss of enamel to a dangerous degree. 

Iced coffee drinks, particularly flavoured coffees, are another sneaky culprit containing both acid and sugar, from the coffee and the flavourings, respectively, that most of us rely on as a delicious pick-me-up to get us through the day. Laden with sugar syrups, these silently eat away at our teeth and can cause quite a lot of damage to our oral health, much to our disappointment. As crazy as it may sound, those ridiculously yummy caramel macchiatos and pumpkin-spiced lattes sometimes contain even more sugar than sodas and can cause serious dental problems and take a toll on your overall health, too.

Refrain from using toothpicks, and don’t use your teeth as tools

Toothpicking, whether with a fingernail or wood toothpicks, is injurious to your teeth and gums. This habit could injure your gums between the teeth and cause gum abscesses, sensitive teeth or even abrasion of the teeth.

If you feel like you really have to pick, it is best that you do so using interdental brushes that are available over the counter. These brushes are very effective at cleaning between the teeth and removing food particles and debris stuck there. Some may even agree that these brushes are more efficient for interdental cleaning than floss and less irritating to the gums.

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Using your front teeth to cut open packages, pop open soda bottles, or rip off pricing tags from clothes is best avoided. You see, your teeth are designed to endure vertical forces and not lateral ones. When you pull on a piece of plastic or cork, you subject your teeth to flexural stress that can bend the tooth and increase the risk of enamel breaking or chipping.

Limit snacking between meals

Your saliva has a very important role in cleaning and protecting your teeth from decay. In addition to remineralising and strengthening your tooth enamel, it also neutralises the acidity in your mouth by virtue of its composition, which includes bicarbonate. 

Every time you eat or drink, it takes your saliva about 20 to 30 minutes to build up to protective levels. When you constantly snack and graze in between meals, it creates an imbalance of bacteria in your saliva that prevents it from doing its job effectively. 

For this reason, Dr Ihsaan recommends sticking with three meals per day instead of continually snacking and skipping meals. 

While it’s best to avoid sweet and sugary drinks altogether, to minimise damage, have them with a meal instead of on their own as a snack. Drinking with a straw or gulping them down instead of slowly sipping can also help limit the time they come into contact with your teeth.

Avoid brushing immediately after eating or drinking to prevent tooth decay

When you eat or drink something sweet or acidic, it temporarily weakens your enamel, making it more prone to damage or being worn away. If you brush right after consuming an acidic food or drink, you might end up causing more harm than good. 

Dentists at Zental recommend waiting at least 30 minutes after a meal before brushing. This gives your enamel enough time to ‘recover’ or remineralise itself after eating foods that are acidic or high in sugar.

Reduce alcohol intake

Alcohol reduces normal salivary secretion, which can dry up your mouth and prevent saliva from washing away residual food particles. This not only invites decay and gum disease but can also give alcoholics a distinctive bad breath.

To thwart oral health problems, we advise limiting alcohol and switching to non-alcoholic beverages instead.

Poor Oral Hygiene Habits to Avoid

There are several poor oral hygiene habits that we should avoid in order to maintain good oral health. These include:

• Not brushing our teeth regularly: Brushing our teeth at least twice a day is essential for removing plaque and bacteria that can cause tooth decay and gum disease.
• Not flossing regularly: Flossing helps to remove food particles and plaque from between our teeth, which can help to prevent gum disease and tooth decay.
• Using a hard-bristled toothbrush: Using a hard-bristled toothbrush can damage our gums and tooth enamel, which can lead to oral health problems.
• Not visiting the dentist regularly: Regular dental check-ups are essential for maintaining good oral health and preventing oral health problems.

What to Avoid at Home

There are several things that we should avoid doing at home in order to maintain good oral health. These include:

• Using teeth as tools: Using our teeth as tools, such as opening packages or biting our nails, can damage our teeth and lead to oral health problems.
• Grinding or clenching our teeth: Grinding or clenching our teeth can damage our teeth and lead to oral health problems, such as temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder.
• Not cleaning our tongue: Not cleaning our tongue can lead to bad breath and oral health problems.
• Not replacing our toothbrush regularly: Not replacing our toothbrush regularly can lead to the buildup of bacteria and plaque, which can cause oral health problems.

Habits to adopt, which can serve to improve your oral health

Brush gently with a soft-bristled toothbrush

Contrary to popular belief, brushing hard won’t clean your teeth any better. It might, however, end up doing more harm than good. Using a hard-bristled toothbrush and brushing with excessive force can wear away your tooth enamel, the protective outermost layer of your teeth. It can also lead to gum recession and tooth lesions.

How can you tell if you’re brushing too hard? Well, if you notice that the bristles of your toothbrush are spread out or splayed while you’re brushing, this means you’re pressing too hard.

Instead, try holding your brush like a pen at a 45-degree angle to your gumline and brush using circular strokes. This ensures that you clean and remove food debris from the gumline and prevents you from exerting too much force on your teeth and gums. 

Rinse with water after enjoying sweet guilty pleasures

You do not need to give up enjoying your favourite sweet foods and drinks entirely. A mindful approach goes a long way, always remember to swish your mouth with water after a sweet treat.

Rinsing will neutralise the acidity and remove all those food particles, residual sugar and debris that’s left clinging to your teeth and gums after you’ve had a sweet snack. If you don’t rinse, there is a higher chance that your mouth will become a breeding ground for bad bacteria, and your sweet tooth could cost you a tremendous amount of trouble in the future. 

Get regular dental checkups

Tooth decay is the most prevalent disease in the world that is preventable. Dr Ihsaan says that regular dental check-ups every three to six months are usually sufficient for preventing tooth decay by catching the early signs of decay and halting it in its initial stages. You can prevent it from progressing to serious problems that require complex and extensive dental treatment.

Chew xylitol-containing gum for gum disease prevention

Research suggests that chewing on a sugar-free xylitol gum improves the salivary flow rate, helping decrease the incidence of cavities and also reversing the damage caused by initial tooth decay by remineralising the lost tooth enamel. 

Chewing on xylitol-containing gum in between meals can help curb some of your sugar cravings while also benefiting your oral health. 

Maintain a healthy diet

A diet rich in fibre-containing foods can encourage the flow of saliva in your mouth, keeping your teeth and gums clean and creating an environment that does not allow bacterial growth. Foods high in calcium and phosphorus, such as dairy products and leafy greens, help strengthen your teeth, protecting them from tooth decay and gum disease.

Good oral health practices guarantee gum disease prevention and also prevents oral health issues, reducing the needs for extensive treatments and cosmetic dentistry procedures. Excellent oral health habits go further to not only prevent oral health issues but systemic issues like cardiovascular disease. Studies have also shown links between oral health and cancer, dementia and autoimmune diseases.

Impeccable Oral Health is Not Unachievable

Trying to keep your mouth as pristine as possible will go a long way in maintaining excellent oral health and, truth be told, isn’t very hard to achieve. Good oral hygiene practices coupled with other habits healthy for your teeth and gums can keep dental decay and gum disease at bay. This is what preventive dentistry is all about.

In a nutshell, here’s what you can do for your dental health to prevent dental decay and keep those pearly whites sparkling for years to come:

1. If you can, brush with a fluoride toothpaste, floss, and rinse after every meal to dislodge any food debris.
2. Avoid sticky, chewy, and sugary foods and drinks.
3. Try not to snack between meals. However, do drink plenty of water during this time to sweep out the lingering residue.
4. Never ever go to bed without brushing your teeth.
5. Brush your teeth first thing in the morning to remove the bacteria that’s been sitting there all night.
6. Show up for regular check ups. 

A lifelong commitment to oral health is a valuable and worthwhile investment that will pay dividends in the long run. If you prioritise your dental health now, you will reap the rewards for years to come. Book a consultation and let us help you take better care of your teeth and gums. At Zental, we believe in a holistic approach to dental care that can make you look and feel your best.