The holidays are a challenging time for maintaining your oral health and preventing cavities and gum disease. During the holidays, we tend to eat more sweets and carbohydrate snack foods. We eat greater quantities and more frequently. Furthermore, we are often visiting others and attending parties away from home, where we keep our teeth cleaning supplies.
So here we offer some tips for keeping up with our oral care while enjoying the holidays.
Dental care tips for holidays
Here are some tips to help you keep good oral hygiene when enjoying your holidays.
Professional Care
The first tip is to make sure that you are up-to-date on your professional cleaning and dental check-ups. If you have not visited the dental office in more than six months, call and make an appointment right away!
Practice the basics: Brushing and flossing
Brushing regularly is the most important activity in preventing gum diseases and tooth decay. When you brush, you remove the bacteria that cause plaque, tooth decay, and gum disease.
Flossing helps remove the plaque and bacteria that your toothbrush cannot reach, so flossing at least once a day is very important. Plaque, the cause of gum disease, is an invisible film of bacteria that forms on your teeth continually. As time goes by, plaque hardens, and it becomes a tartar that is very difficult to remove; it can only be removed by professional cleaning.
Dentists recommend you brush your teeth after every meal or at least brush twice a day and floss once a day since the bacterial activity on your teeth starts immediately after eating.
Carry a portable toothbrush
After eating away from home, you can use a portable toothbrush. Travel kits with brushes and small tubes of paste are available at all major pharmacy stores. If you carry a purse, you can also include floss. And floss can fit in a pocket for those not equipped with a purse. You can also carry sugarless gum, which is useful in preventing tooth decay when brushing or flossing is not available. Choose gum that includes xylitol. Consider keeping all of these items in your car.
Switch to a special electric toothbrush for home use
To keep your teeth and gum healthy all the time, we recommend the professional powered brush with micro-access filaments: Rota-dent. This powerful brush is clinically proven as effective as manual brushing and flossing combined! Rota-dent helps to reduce harmful bacteria by cleaning the areas between teeth and below the gum line better than the standard bristles on manual toothbrushes. These filaments with the 360-degree sweeping action clean out plaque and bacteria from your difficult-to-reach areas. You can purchase your Rota-dent at any 7 Day Dental office.
Don’t forget to drink a lot of water
Holidays are filled with activity, and therefore you will often find yourself down on energy. That’s the time when you want to buy that fancy sports drink that you keep hearing on TV all the time. Forget all those distracting advertisements and drink water. Add some fluoride in it to keep your teeth healthy.
7 Day Dental is here for you!
Remember that our 4 Orange County offices are available for all your dental needs during the holidays and throughout the year.
We are available weekends and holidays and anytime you need us in an emergency.
To schedule an appointment, call 866-989-1335