Maintaining the health of your teeth and gums is your responsibility. Even if you are not at home, you cannot afford to be careless about taking care of your teeth.
Here are a few tips to help you develop good oral care habits that you can do while you’re at work.
Using your teeth as a tool to tear a strip of tape or open a package or bottle cap can damage your tooth enamel. Similarly, avoid holding pins or other objects in the mouth. All these things can result in a broken or chipped tooth, and then your enamel layer can’t protect your teeth from bacteria. Your teeth should only be used for chewing food.
Chewing on pens, pencils, fingernails, and other hard objects can erode tooth enamel over time. This can lead to tooth sensitivity or cracked or fractured tooth crowns, which in turn can lead to root canal infection. If you need to chew, try carrot sticks or celery. These not only satisfy your “crunchies,” but they also naturally help clean your teeth and encourage your mouth to generate saliva which also helps keep the mouth clean.
Coffee has some benefits, but drinking it all day long from time to time is extremely detrimental to your teeth. Most people drink coffee like that out of habit and not because they need it. It leads to stained teeth, a dry mouth and subsequently, bad breath. Caffeine is diuretic, which means that it flushes fluids out of the body. This can affect saliva levels in the mouth leading to dry mouth which means there’s less natural protection against bacteria, which also means an increased chance of cavities and decay.
Limit your intake of coffee and avoid nursing a cup over the course of several hours or the duration of the day. This habit increases the staining power of coffee. If you can, drink it within a short time period. To replenish the fluids that the caffeine flushes out, make sure that you drink at least one cup of water after your coffee.
Many people neglect this, or think it’s not worth it or too complicated, but it can make the world of difference to your mouth. While the American Dental Association recommends that we brush at least twice a day, ideally, we should be brushing after every meal. Also, plaque doesn’t stop forming during the day and if you can brush at lunch, you should. So do take your toothbrush with you to work and keep your teeth healthy.
If you need any more information about the basics of teeth cleaning, or have any current concerns about your oral health such as ongoing bad breath issues, book an appointment with Novi Family Dentistry by calling us now at (248) 946-8142 or visiting us at 23975 Novi Rd. Suite 102, Novi, MI 48375.
