3 Tips To Help You Protect And Keep Your Teeth In Good Health
Keeping your teeth and gums healthy and cavity-free is an important part of maintaining your body's overall health. Here are three tips you can use to help you prevent tooth decay and loss to keep a healthy mouth and all your teeth the rest of your life.
Practice Good Oral Health Habits
Keeping your teeth clean is one of the first steps to a healthy mouth, which includes brushing and flossing daily. It is recommended to brush your teeth for two minutes at least twice a day with a soft-bristled toothbrush, and floss them at least once a day. This helps to remove the build-up of sticky plaque that accumulates on your teeth from eating. If you don't remove this plaque, it can harden into tartar within 24 hours and will need to be scraped from the surface of your teeth by a dental professional.
Besides helping you to keep your teeth healthy and prevent tooth decay, this hardened tartar can actually irritate your gums and cause them to become inflamed and pull away from your teeth, causing pockets of space that can collect additional plaque and further become infected. Infection in your gums leads to periodontal disease and can even allow the bacterial infection to spread to other parts of your body, including the lining of your heart to cause pericarditis heart disease.
Keep your teeth and gums in good health by visiting your dentist regularly for check-ups and to have your teeth cleaned. During your check-up, your dental hygienist will remove any build-up of hard tartar on your teeth to prevent gum inflammation.
Practice Oil Pulling
Oil pulling is a method you can use each day to remove bacteria, plaque, and toxins from your mouth. This practice also whitens your teeth and improves the health of your gums. Some individuals have even reported the oil pulling practice has healed their cavities and other oral infections without the use of drugs or antibiotics.
Practice oil pulling each morning when you first wake up. Place one to two teaspoons of coconut oil in your mouth, allow it to melt, then swish it through your mouth and around your teeth and gums for 20 minutes. Once finished, spit it into the trash and rinse your mouth with warm water, then brush your teeth, as usual. Twenty minutes of time for the oil pulling is enough time for the oil to clean your teeth and remove bacteria and toxins from your mouth without your mouth reabsorbing any of the impurities trapped in the oil.
Promote Tooth Remineralization With Your Diet
A healthy diet is another important way to improve the health of your teeth and gums. Eating a diet rich in the proper minerals and nutrients can boost your tooth health and can even reverse tooth decay that could lead to the need for teeth removal. It is important to reduce and eliminate added sugar in your diet while eating raw honey, molasses, and fruits sparingly. Sugar added into foods can increase the amount of bacteria in your mouth and can decalcify your tooth structure which can lead to decay.
Next, it is important to avoid foods which contain phytic acid, such as grains, nuts, seeds, and beans. The phytic acid pulls essential minerals from your teeth, which help keep them strong. The phytic acid also attaches to the calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, iron, and zinc in the foods to reduce your body's ability to absorb them. These minerals are essential for keeping your teeth structures healthy and strong. If you soak and sprout grains, beans, and nuts before you eat them, this can reduce and eliminate the phytic acid in them to make them healthy for your teeth.
Use these tips to help keep your teeth healthy and prevent dental cavities.