5 Things Every Family Should Know
Dental health awareness in public is still an ignored aspect of healthcare sector. Unfortunately lack of knowledge about dental health and dental diseases may land many people in trouble. To avoid unnecessary trouble here are the 5 basic things every family should know.
- Bad habits
Be aware about bad habits of your child in time. If your child has habits like thumb sucking, tongue thrusting or mouth breathing, that may give your child crooked teeth. If not distracted them from continuing these habits, in future extensive treatments may need to correct them by orthodontic braces treatment. If you observe such habits, visit an orthodontist, who can give habit breaking appliances to your child and can prevent getting crooked teeth appearance later in life.
- Swelling
Dental decay or impacted wisdom tooth can give rise to swollen chick sometime. In such cases do not apply hot pack on cheek. A hot pack increases swelling. Instead apply ice pack, which will help to reduce swelling and temporary relief from pain. Same principle applies after tooth extraction.
Be aware of your child’s dental health as they usually confuse dental pain with teething pain. Incase of any discoloration or cavitation in teeth, report to a pedodontist or child specialist immediately, even if it is the milk tooth that is affected.
- Avulsed tooth
In accident cases or cases of fall, sometimes an entire tooth gets luxated or pulled out. If this happens, instead of throwing away the avulsed tooth, store it in patient’s own saliva, saline, water, milk, or coconut water. Get the patient immediately to the dental office along with avulsed tooth. Your dentist can try to fix the same tooth back in it’s original position. Remember this is possible only if tooth is stored properly and if patient reports within 48 hours.
- Oral health check up
Even if you don’t have any dental and oral health problems visit your dentist at least once a year to know the status of your oral health, just like we do annual body checkups. If the dentist observes any cavities or any gum disease, then that can be treated as early as possible. Otherwise delays can worsen the problems.
Professional cleaning of teeth can be done once a year but if your dentist found that you are unable to clean your teeth he can suggest you, need of cleaning after every 6 months, 3 months or 1 month depending on your oral hygiene status, your individual tendency to form tartar deposits, and your efforts to maintain the results. Timely tooth fillings can prevent root canal treatments, infectious swellings or total loss of tooth.
- Right method of brushing teeth
Brushing twice a day cannot help to prevent plaque formation without the right method of brushing. How do you brush your teeth? Horizontal motion? Circular motion? Or vertical motion? Here is the right way to clean your teeth.
Modified Bass brushing technique:
- Hold the brush head to about a 45-degree angle, so that the bristles are pointing under the gum line and some on tooth surface.
- After this move your brush back and forth by keeping bristles inside the gum line. This helps to clean under gums. After this flick the head of brush toward the cutting edge of your teeth. So that it will move plaque out of gums and also cleans the interdental spaces.
- Repeat this procedure for each side’s teeth. For other surfaces of tooth, use circular motions. To clean the tongue side of teeth you need to angulate brush vertically on them.
- Do not brush too vigorously but do it gently.
- Do not brush more than 2 minutes and 3 times a day.
- Clean your tongue with a tongue cleaner or the serrated backside of your tooth brush.
- Don’t forget to use dental floss or interdental brushes as adviced by tour dentist.
Visit your dentist at least once a year to know your oral hygiene status. Any diseases or cavities detected early can be treated without much aggressive treatment. Do not forget that prevention is always better than cure. There are many preventive treatments available like scaling and polishing, fluoride application, Sealants etc. Your dentist can only educate you about them after consulting him/her. So don’t ignore visits to your dentist.
