Insight To Help You Take Care Of Your Oral Health To Prevent, Heal, And Restore Oral Decay

Taking care of your oral health is an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Oral decay, and tooth and gum loss as part of unhealthy oral health can cause you issues with speech, eating, smiling, and can affect your self-confidence. Fortunately, depending on the condition of your oral health and stage of any decay, there are many options to help prevent, heal, and repair teeth and gum decay and infection. Here is some insight to help you take care of your mouth and its health during various changes and stages in the condition of your oral health.

Preventative Maintenance

To keep your healthy teeth healthy and free of decay and your gums free of infection and inflammation, it is important to brush and floss daily. Use a soft-bristled tooth brush so you don't damage the enamel on your teeth or irritate your gums. Brushing your teeth daily is necessary to remove the sticky plaque that builds up daily, which can quickly harden into tartar and will need to be scraped from your teeth.

It is also important to visit your dentist throughout the year for a check-up and to clean off any tartar build-up. Talk to your dentist about an appropriate check-up schedule depending on your health and your oral needs.

At-Home Oral Healing Processes

Oil pulling is a process that can help heal your teeth and gums, with the use of coconut oil each day. First thing in the morning, before you eat or drink anything, take one to two teaspoons of coconut oil into your mouth and swish it around for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, spit the oil into the trash, rinse your mouth with warm water, and brush your teeth as usual for the day.

As you swish the coconut oil around your teeth, gums, and other oral tissues, the oil traps toxins and bacteria in your mouth that can lead to oral cavities. Oil pulling also helps reduce gum inflammation and infection, and can whiten the appearance of your teeth.

You can also help stop and reverse oral cavity growth in your mouth with your diet. Studies have found that eliminating foods that contain high amounts of phytic acid from your diet can stop tooth decay and even heal cavities. Phytic acids in foods slows your body absorption of tooth-healthy minerals, such as magnesium, iron, and zinc, and also cause your body to lose calcium, which is an important mineral your teeth need to stay healthy.

Foods that are high in phytic acid include grains, nuts, legumes, and seeds and should be avoided to help improve your oral health. You can also increase your body's intake of fat-soluble vitamins A, K, E, and D, which will help your oral health, and you can do this by taking vitamin supplements.

Professional Restorative Procedures

When you have already experienced tooth loss from oral decay or gum disease, it is not possible to regrow an entire tooth to fill the empty socket. Fortunately, there are professional dental procedures to restore your teeth and the appearance of your smile with the use of dental implants. It is recommended to talk to your dentist to make sure you are a candidate for dental implants, as your oral bone structure needs to be sufficient to hold the implant in place.

Dental implants can replace one or several missing teeth and consists of your dentist placing a metal implant post into your jaw bone. Your jaw bone will actually fuse to the implant post, so it won't move around or fall out. Upon the end of the implant, your dentist will install an abutment, which is the base of where the natural-looking tooth crown will be placed upon. The tooth crown can be made of porcelain or other durable materials that won't decay as your normal teeth do.

Use these three types of insight to help you improve your oral health.


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