After a busy day at school, most kids are ready for snack time. Healthy after-school snacks are essential not just for overall growth and development but also for oral health. It is important to help children learn good snacking habits early to keep teeth and gums in good condition.

How Can Food Damage Teeth and Gums?

The main offender is sugar. Bacteria living in our mouths feed on sugar and produce acid that can dissolve tooth enamel. Eventually, this leads to tooth decay. Acids in carbonated beverages like soda are also harmful. Sticky treats like candy and gummies can stay on teeth for a long time and should be avoided. It is difficult to completely cut out sugary goodies, so save them for special occasions. Remember to brush after indulging in these sweet treats!

Foods that Benefit Oral Health

Give your kids foods that provide vitamins and minerals for healthy teeth and gums. Leafy, dark green vegetables like spinach and kale have vitamin B2, vitamin A, and magnesium, which all benefit teeth and gums. Vitamin C is needed to help prevent the loss of collagen in gums. Look for this nutrient in citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruit.

Milk, cheese, and yogurt have a double impact on oral health. They provide calcium as well as neutralize the acid in the mouth, reducing the effects on tooth enamel from acidic foods.

Some foods provide vitamins and a little muscle power to “scrub” teeth and “massage” gums. Apples, strawberries, carrots, and celery have a texture that is beneficial in cleaning teeth. Also, these crunchy foods can aid in saliva production, which is needed to keep enamel healthy.

Choosing Healthy After-School Snacks

The best way to get kids on board is to involve them. Take them shopping in the produce section for their favorite fruits and veggies. Let them pick fun treats that pack a nutritious punch.

Keep these healthy choices simple and fun. Have a hummus buffet made up of tubs of different flavors of this healthy dip with the kids’ choices of veggies. Pair different textures: cheese cubes with nuts and berries. For a protein boost before sports, try reduced sugar cereal with low-fat milk or lunch meat and cheese pinwheels. Crunchy apple slices with low-sugar peanut butter will satisfy hunger before homework.

Make sure you always keep healthy alternatives on hand to take away the temptation to make sugary choices. Stock the refrigerator with sugar-free yogurt for an on-the-go snack that packs some calcium. Keep cut-up fruit like strawberries, cantaloupe, and orange slices within easy reach, and let nuts and veggie chips be pantry staples.

Remember that making healthy snack choices is just one part of good oral health for your kids. Encourage good brushing and flossing habits, and schedule regular dental check-ups. Mountain View Dental, located in Pleasant View, Utah, has a comfortable and professional office ready to meet your kids’ dental needs. If you have questions about dental health or would like to make an appointment, call 385-324-3557.

Practicing proper dental hygiene requires a lifetime commitment. Even if you’ve been told you have a nice smile, you need to stay on top of maintaining your pearly whites. Every day, patients ask about steps they can follow to keep their smiles bright and beautiful. Even if you don’t see immediate effects, realize that most dental care is all about daily habits and prevention. This involves getting the right products for you and creating healthy habits that will last. Let’s take a look at the top 5 tips for achieving better oral health.

Brush your Teeth Twice a Day for Two Minutes

Let’s start with the basics. The ADA (American Dental Association) recommends that you brush your teeth for around two minutes at least twice a day. This is to help prevent plaque from forming on your teeth. If you spend less than two minutes brushing, you simply won’t remove as much plaque. In fact, a recent study showed that simply increasing your brushing time from around 45 seconds to 2 minutes can help remove up to 26% more plaque.

When it comes to choosing the brush that’s right for your teeth, make sure to stay away from hard bristles. Try to select a toothbrush that fits your lifestyle needs as well. If you’re on the go more often, use a manual toothbrush and brush your teeth with small, circular motions across all of your teeth and gums. If you’re in one place more often, go for the electric toothbrush with a rotating brush head. Remember to switch out your brush whenever the bristles become stiff, frayed, or discolored.

Floss After you Eat

One of the most important habits to start and maintain is flossing. It’s not fun and it takes patience to master, but the rewards are definitely worth it. Basically, flossing helps keep the in-between, hard-to-reach areas of the mouth clean and debris-free! Think of floss as the fun attachments that come with your all-in-one vacuum cleaner that helps you clean baseboards, reach corners on the ceiling, and clean underneath sofas. To keep your teeth healthy and clean, floss at least twice a day or after every meal to ensure all food particles are removed.

Most people brush their teeth first and then floss afterward, but the reverse is actually the best way to go about it. If you floss your teeth first, you’re removing the harder-to-reach particles from all the crevices in the mouth. Then, when you brush your teeth, it’s easier to remove everything from the mouth, including what you just flossed out. Make sure you talk to your dentist about proper flossing methods before building an incorrect habit. If hand-held flossing isn’t working, speak to your dentist about using other methods of flossing.

Don’t Smoke

Put simply, smoking increases your risk for gum disease by over 50%. Not only does it completely ruin your oral health, but it also leads to other serious illnesses like multiple types of cancers, heart disease, and diabetes. The most common problems smoking causes to your dental health are: bad breath, tooth yellowing, increased build-up of plaque and tartar on the teeth, and delayed healing after all types of oral surgeries. The more serious problems smoking causes are bone loss within the jawline, increased risk of leukoplakia and gum disease, tooth loss, and a significantly increased risk of developing oral cancer.

Since smoking is one of the most addictive habits to break, the ADA informed patients that once they stop smoking, they can see immediate restorative benefits in their oral health. For instance, smokers who reduced their smoking amount by half had immediately decreased their risk of gum disease by 50%. A separate study showed that leukoplakia had completely resolved within 6 weeks of over 96% of patients who stopped using all tobacco-related products (including smokeless). Ask your dentist immediately for resources that can help you kick your smoking habit today!

Manage your Stress

In today’s society, stress seems like another progression of life. So, the idea of ridding yourself of stress seems like a fairytale image. However, being mindful of stressful situations as they arise and practicing stress-relieving techniques can actually make a huge difference in your oral health. In short, stress can make it harder for your body to fight against infections. Gum disease is essentially an infection of your gums that causes painful bleeding gums, tooth loss, and bad breath. Stress can also cause you to develop unhealthy habits like clenching your jaw or even pick up smoking.

Some ways to help you relieve your stress include: managing your sleep schedule to get 8 hours of sleep, exercises that help you practice breathing, meditating on things that bring you peace, and shaving off any bad habits or people from your life that cause any sort of wrongful treatment to you or your mental health.

Schedule Regular Dentist Visits

Most everyone has heard that we’re supposed to visit our dentists twice a year. While this is certainly a great start to a healthy habit, this rule of thumb doesn’t count for everyone. It’s important to remember that you and your smile are unique and will require customized care. To figure out how often you should visit your dentist, you’ll need to sit down and discuss your oral health needs.

Some people who may require more visits a year include:

Women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant
Smokers
Diabetics
People with significant oral health problems like gum disease
People with dental needs requiring more visits (braces, dentures, and more).
Children

These Are Our Top 5 Tips for Achieving Better Oral Health

There are many tips and tricks to maintaining a healthy and happy smile. The most important thing to remember is that your dental hygiene is unique and requires a unique approach to preventing bad things from happening. While most tips are usually applied to all, speak with your dentist about setting up an oral health care plan that suits your needs. Schedule out the needed dentist visits, talk about what foods to eat and which products would work best for your and your smile. Remember, achieving better oral health is mostly about prevention! Act now before requiring any kind of serious treatments for necessary clean-ups.

To get started on improving your oral health, contact our professional and pleasant staff here at Mountain View Dental. If you have questions or want to schedule an appointment, give us a call today at 385-324-3557!

Women’s History Month: Women in history have made great strides towards improving the function of dentistry. Furthering research, providing outstanding services, and facing all obstacles head-on for their passion to compete in the dental industry with their male peers. Miraculously, women in the dental field have extracted teeth in secret, visited remote villages by dog sled needing dental help, and challenged universities across the world for their rights. Today, we’re celebrating women’s history month and taking a look at 3 women who impacted dentistry around the world.

#1: Clara W. MacNaughton: The First Involved Female Dentist

As far back as the 1800s, Clara was an involved activist for women’s rights in America. Her involvement was so noteworthy that in the late 1800s, she became one of the first female dentists known. Clara graduated from the University of Michigan in 1885 and after opening her own practice, became the Vice President of the Michigan State Dental Society. Because woman suffrage was so important to her, she eventually moved her dental practice from Michigan straight to Washington, D.C. Her practice was solely focused on women and children where she happily used her gender role to be seen as nurturing and understanding towards all of her patients.

Clara also made international headlines as she frequently traveled for dentistry work. In fact, in 1889, she became the delegate to the International Dental Congress in Paris. A few years later in 1893, she became heavily involved in the World’s Columbian Dental Congress in Chicago, Illinois. While dentistry was her passion, she also lobbied for female physicians and female staff in women’s prisons.

#2: Emeline Roberts Jones: The First Female Practicing

Born in New England, Emeline married a practicing dentist, Daniel Jones, in 1854 at the young age of 18. He carried the belief that women were not equipped to deal in dentistry because of their figures being “frail”. Emeline couldn’t have disagreed more. She studied dentistry in secret, diligently. Amongst her secret works, she had successfully filled and extracted hundreds of teeth. After coming forward with her accomplishments, her husband allowed her to begin practicing alongside him. She was only 19 at the time.

At the age of 23, she became his treasured business partner, and when she became widowed in 1865, she took over their practice completely before starting her travels through Connecticut and Rhode Island before finally settling near New Haven. Her career as a dentist lasted nearly 6 decades when she became an honored member of the National Dental Association in 1914.

#3: Ida Gray: The First Female African-American Dentist

Growing up as an orphan, Ida Gray had to overcome many obstacles in her underprivileged childhood. When Ida was in high school, she met Dr. Jonathan Taft and began working in his office while in school. Studying under Dr. Taft, she had enough training to attend the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in 1887 and promptly graduated in 1990. After graduation, Ida became famous for seeing both black and white patients in Cinncinati and Chicago. Once she opened her practice in Chicago, she inspired one of her long-time patients, Olive M. Henderson, to become the city’s second black female dentist.

As excited about civil and women’s rights as she was about dentistry, Dr. Gray became vice president of the Professional Women’s Club of Chicago and the Eighth Regiment Ladies’ Auxiliary. These groups worked hard to grow and maintain the rights of women of color in their professional endeavors.

Celebrate Women’s History Month Us!

Anyone, regardless of gender or upbringing, can make significant changes in their job field. We recognize these powerful women, among many other, who bravely faced circumstances to stand up for their passion of becoming a dentist. They paved the path for amazing women in the dental field nowadays and for future generations. For this month, and every month, we are happy to support our amazing women in our practice and practices around the world.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’d like to put a smile on your face at your next dental visit. Contact our professional and pleasant staff here at Mountain View Dental for all of your dental health needs. If you have concerns or want to schedule an appointment, give us a call today at 385-324-3557!

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