Brushing your teeth and avoiding sugar aren’t the only things you should be doing to protect your teeth. The health of your teeth also has to do with the health of your mouth in general, which includes the gums. According to some top dentists out there, there are a lot of mistakes being made in oral care.
One such mistake, is that people are switching to sugar free beverages and assuming that this is a better option than a sugary one. If you’re switching to water, sure you’re good to go. But some other options including sports drinks, soft drinks, and flavored mineral water have been shown to lead to tooth erosion thanks to their high content of citric acid. Plus, for the rest of your health it’s important to consider that sugar free drinks made with artificial sugars have been shown to make people crave sugar similarly to how they would crave it if they were drinking a full sugar drink.
Coffee is another drink that’s high in acid and can damage the teeth, so it’s easy to see how you could be overdoing it on acidic stuff. When you drink a lot of acidic drinks it can change the lower the pH of your saliva, which means that the acid can stick around and continue to damage the teeth even after you’ve swallowed the acidic drink.
Some research has shown that brushing your teeth too soon after eating acidic food can also perpetuate the breakdown of the tooth enamel. Instead of brushing the acid off, you should rinse your mouth out with water or wait 30 minutes to brush.
Using toothpaste that is too harsh can cause similar troubles. Many of us assume that the stronger the toothpaste the better it works, but that isn’t the case when it comes to protecting the tooth enamel.
Brushing too much or too hard will also wear down the enamel. Keeping your mouth clean is important, but you shouldn’t be brushing after every single thing you eat. If you do you could be setting yourself up for needing a root canal down the line. When the gums start to recede, brushing the teeth also ends up brushing the exposed root, which wears down much faster than the teeth actually do. Be mindful about using strong powered electric toothbrushes or even a hard bristled toothbrush when you could maybe get away with a soft or medium one.
There are actually a lot of strange things that can affect the health of your mouth. Biting your nails for example can cause a defect to the gums called gingival clefts where your gums split. This can also occur from chewing on pens or anything too much, it seems. Chewing on non food items can also chip your teeth.
Even stress can affect the health of your mouth. (As if stress didn’t already have enough ill effects on the body.) Stress can lead to a breakdown of the gums, which can cause receding over time which would require treatment to return them to full health.
Yikes one more thing to think about
So we should stick to water pretty all the time lol