Patient Education

You should be brushing your teeth twice a day & flossing at least once a day. Most people brush in the morning  & brush & floss at night before bed. If you want to brush after lunch too, we highly approve. When you brush your teeth it should be for a full two minutes. Make sure you get the back & front sides of your upper & lower teeth & their biting surfaces. If you’d like the dentist to demonstrate proper brushing & flossing technique, please just ask during your visit!

Don’t believe everything your hear in the news. It’s true that more studies are needed to solidify the connection between flossing & various effects on your oral health. But that doesn’t mean flossing is ineffective, it just means we need to know more. To us, the idea of not ever cleaning plaque & food out from between your teeth is scary, not to mention gross! Why would you want all that nasty stuff hiding away somewhere in your mouth, feeding bacteria & causing bad breath? You still need to floss everyday!

Yes! There is some stubborn tooth gunk that even the best brushing & flossing can’t get off. This is especially true of tartar, which is the hard substance that plaque can turn into if not cleaned off in time. Getting a professional scaling & polishing (the technical term for a teeth cleaning) by a dentist can actually improve the appearance of your smile by removing stains. Polished teeth are also smoother & harder for bacteria to stick to, which will make your at-home brushing & polishing efforts more effective.

As children, we’re taught that eating too much candy causes cavities, so it must be sugar that causes tooth decay, right? Actually, that’s an overly simple way of explaining the process. Sugar is more like the fuel for decay & it doesn’t just come from sweet foods. When you eat, chemicals called enzymes in your saliva break down carbohydrates into sugars. These sugars—plus the sugar compounds that occur naturally in fruit & foods sweetened with refined sugar or corn syrup—are then eaten by the bacteria in your mouth. Unless you brush or floss them away, these bacteria hang out in your mouth, consuming the sugar & excreting a waste product in the form of acid. This acid is what eats holes in your tooth enamel & the softer dentin layer underneath, causing cavities & tooth decay.

Children should see the dentist when their first tooth comes in or by age 3, whichever comes first. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be caring for your baby’s oral health before then. After feeding, you can clean your baby’s gums by rubbing them gently with a damp washcloth. For more advice about caring for your baby’s mouth, please feel free to ask your pediatrician or us.