From dental implants to teeth whitening to teeth aligners, there are many ways that you can improve the quality and overall appearance of your teeth – even if your natural teeth themselves are long gong or are currently beyond repair. But taking care of your teeth is hugely important throughout the entirety of the your life, and can actually prevent the need for things like dental implants in the long run. However, emergencies do happen (as any emergency dentist can attest to) and dental implants are good to have as an option – just in case.
If you have children, you should be doing the best that you possibly can to get them on track with taking care of their teeth. It’s important to begin taking care of their teeth as soon as these teeth emerge, which can be as early on in life as just a few months of age – a very slim minority of babies are actually born with teeth! But it’s important to note that toothpaste with fluoride should not be used until a child has passed their second birthday, as fluoride is not safe to swallow (and very young babies and children cannot be expected to know that toothpaste should not be swallowed) and the fluoride has actually been found to be damaging to such new teeth.
In addition to this daily care, regular visits to the childrens dentist should also be scheduled, ideally for twice a year instead of just once (as is often the case with other types of wellness exams). These visits should begin relatively early on in life, with a recommended starting point before the child in question reaches their second birthday. Fortunately, this is the case for most children who are between the ages of two and seventeen here in the United States, as more than eighty four percent of this entire population has been found to visit their dental for children dental care at least once a year, if not even more frequently.
But, unfortunately, cavities are also prevalent in the age group mentioned about. In fact, nearly half of all children (around forty percent of them, to be more exact) have had at least one cavity by the time that they have reached the age of starting kindergarten. And of all the cavities that are faced by children, up to thirteen percent of them will actually go untreated. This can lead to a great deal of dental pain and can even result in missed days of school in correlation to that pain – something that should absolutely be taken seriously.
Untreated cavities are common among adults as well, with up to one adult out of every five having at least one untreated cavity if not more. This can lead to far more severe levels of tooth decay and even to the need for dental implants, which serve, in many cases, as a replacement to teeth that have been lost forever.
And the impact of a less than healthy looking smile can be significant, with up to nearly thirty percent of all people here in the United States saying that teeth are the absolute first thing that they notice about someone, as well as the most prominent thing that they will remember once the encounter is over as well. And having less than desirable looking teeth can even lead to a considerable amount of anxiety among people, with twenty percent stating that the condition of their teeth led to such feelings on a regular basis, if not on a daily one.
Fortunately, there are things that can be done to improve the look of your teeth. Teeth whitening can, as the name suggests, significantly whiten your teeth. In addition to this, braces and retainers can help to straighten then out and can even help the alignment of your jaw, correcting everything from an overbite to an under bite. And, of course, dental implants can be used when there is no salvaging your natural teeth and nowadays, dental implants look truly more realistic and natural than ever before.
Your teeth matter and taking care of them can keep them in good shape for a lifetime.
