Caring for an Elderly Parent With Special Dental Needs
Ways To Maintain Your Oral Health During The Holidays
Joe Lawrence
During the holidays, there are tons of opportunities to indulge in activities that can wreak havoc on your dental health. Nevertheless, there are also things that you can do to maintain your oral health during the festivities. Here are a few of them:
Enjoy your cheese.
Often, parties will contain cheese trays during the holidays. It is okay to indulge in this dairy treat. The cheese can help balance the pH of your oral cavity, especially if you have been indulging in acidic alcoholic beverages or sodas. Also, the food has a substantial amount of calcium, which can help remineralize tooth enamel.
Avoid wine.
If you would like to keep your teeth their whitest throughout the holidays, it is best to avoid red wine. By sipping on red wine as you chat with friends, you are bathing your teeth in the dark liquid repeatedly. Still, if you don't want to avoid red wine altogether, be sure to consume the wine with food. The food can help lessen the concentration of dark pigments in your mouth.
Keep sugarless gum handy.
As you visit loved ones throughout the holidays, you will probably be offered large numbers of delectable treats. However, you may not have the opportunity to brush your teeth immediately after these snacks. Thus, it is a good idea to take along sugarless gum.
The gun can help pull leftover debris from your teeth. In addition, it helps promote saliva production, so that plaque and food particles can be rinsed from your mouth.
As an added bonus, gum that is sweetened with xylitol can help kill oral bacteria.
Try to avoid sodas.
Although sugary sodas are known for causing damage to tooth enamel, sugarless sodas are also harmful. Sodas are highly acidic. As a result, they can cause damage to your teeth like bacterial acid.
Bacterial acid is released by oral bacteria after they feed on particles of food within the mouth. The acid demineralizes the tooth enamel. Acid from soda also dissolves the minerals of the teeth. This results in tooth decay.
Enjoy turkey.
Turkey, which is often a part of holiday meals, contains calcium and phosphorus. These minerals are important components of tooth enamel. If your teeth are exposed to fluoride before eating the turkey, the turkey may even help with enamel remineralization.
Fluoride coats the surface of the teeth and attracts displaced minerals, such as calcium and phosphorus, back to the teeth to form a new, more acid-resistant enamel material.
To learn more things that you can do to protect your oral health during the holidays, schedule a consultation with a dentist from a clinic like Simmons Craig A D D S.
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Caring for an elderly parent tends to be tough enough without the added stress of dealing with dental implants or dentures. But, the prospect is not the end of the world—there are many things you can do to ensure that your parent's dental health is not compromised without having to spend a lot of personal time doing the care yourself. Between working with the right dentist, hiring a service provider for part time work, and giving your parent the tools he or she needs to care for his or her own dental health at home, you'll find that dental health for your loved one isn't so tough or time consuming after all. Hopefully you are able to get the support and information you need right here.