Steps to healthy looking teeth and gums!

photo credits to www.mymilktoof.blogspot.com

click the link to their page! *cute pictures alert*

Hey guys! Figured that as a dentist I should contribute a little on spreading oral health care so I'm going to share with you the basic steps in my oral health care routine to achieve healthy teeth and gums. ( It will be written in laymen's term and simplified for easy understanding)

First, you need to know a little bit about how tooth decay is formed:

Basically this is what happens when you consume dietary carbohydrates, the bacteria which are present in your mouth will ferment the food to produce acid. The acid produced are responsible for tooth decay.

However, these bacteria cannot just stick on the teeth like that. They need a medium to stay on and this medium is called plaque.

1) TOOTH BRUSHING

What does tooth brushing do? It removes bacteria in form of plaque.

Brushing my teeth is the first thing I do every morning. It may sound like a common sense but there are more than a handful of people who brushes their teeth after taking their breakfast. This is a very very bad habit and it may actually be the cause of you having tooth decay.

The reason for this is, imagine when you are sleeping, there will be decrease in salivary flow, so all the good stuff that the saliva is doing including flushing the bacteria, buffering the pH, remineralizing the tooth are all gone.

When you wake up in the morning, there will be super large amount of bacteria present in your mouth in form of plaque. Not knowing that, you will happily carry these bacteria in your mouth to share your breakfast with! Yuck! So all the bacteria will be eating the carbs that you take in and turn it into acid which eventually dissolves your tooth structure forming a decay.

So please brush your teeth first thing in the morning!!

The right way to brush your teeth:

* reminder: 

- choose a tooth brush with soft bristles and increase your brushing time instead of shortening your brushing time by using hard bristles.

- brush 2 times a day and rinse your mouth after every meal.

2) FLOSSING

I know I know... Flossing can be a difficult routine to follow everyday. But for those pretty ladies and handsome boys out there who spend hours putting on skin care and masks, you can take 1 minute of that time to do some flossing can you?

Why do you need to floss? Tooth brushing removes most of the plaque on the tooth surface. But it cannot remove plaque between the teeth. Why do you always have decay between the teeth? This is probably the reason.

Practice makes perfect!

One minute flossing technique:

Some people have large gap or holes between their teeth. If you are one of them, instead of flossing, you need to use something called an interdental brush.

For this you have to choose the correct size which is suitable for your teeth. Don't ever buy a brush which is bigger than the space between your teeth. It will damage your teeth.

If you are wondering where to get this... You can get it from DAISO for rm5.30 for 4 brushes. Choose the correct size! Or you can get it in any dental clinic with a more expensive price :D

3) TONGUE CLEANING

People often neglect their tongue hygiene. Some of the cases of bad breaths are actually due to not cleaning the tongue properly. The tongue also serves as a reservoir which harvest bacteria and food debris. So make sure your clean your tongue!

How to brush your tongue:

4) MOUTH RINSE

Mouth rinse is the also important if you wanna complete the whole routine. Based on my personal experience, mouth rinse does help in many of my dental problems including sensitive teeth and inflamed gums.

After tooth brushing and flossing, your teeth should be nice and clean. however there will be still some areas that you can't reach. For example the back of your last tooth, your wisdom tooth and so on. Therefore you need a mouth rinse to remove the remaining bacteria, to provide fluoride which strengthens your teeth and freshen up your breath.

What I will recommend is an alcohol-free mouth rinse. (As the alcohol ones may cause dry mouth and research is undergoing on whether it has a relation with causing oral cancer or not.)

Colgate plax range claims to be alcohol free. As for Listerine, they recently came out with listerine zero which is alcohol free. Listerine green tea which Im currently using and in love with its flavour, is also alcohol free ( stated in the ingredient section).

LASTLY,

Visit the dentist every half a year to get a dental check up or scaling done. This will help you save a lot of money compared to going to the dentist when you have a tooth decay to do filling, root canal, crowns, implants and so on.

Thats's all for routine oral health care. Although there are more high tech stuff and all. but stick to the basics! That is all you need! 

Leave me comments below on any questions you wanna ask on oral health and topics that you want me to address on as I will be writing a post on FAQ about dental health.

Thanks for reading! xoxo