When it comes to maintaining one’s health, dental care is one of the most important parts. We’re only given one set of adult teeth, so keeping them healthy is a very essential task. Failure to maintain proper tooth cleanliness can lead to gum disease, tooth disease, and eventually may lead to tooth removal and dental implants. To avoid major gum disease, here are three steps you can take to keep your teeth healthy.
- Regular Brushing and Flossing: The most important step you can take to prevent major gum disease is to regularly brush and floss your teeth. The American Dental Association recommends brushing twice a day, and it is usually best to brush once in the morning and once in the evening. Flossing should also be done at least once a day, though no more than twice. It is possible to floss too much and inadvertently damage the gums, so flossing should be handled with extreme care.
- Regular Dental Work: Another key step in preventing major gum disease is to visit your family dentist on a regular basis. The general rule is that you should visit the dentist for a regular cleaning every six months. Having your teeth professionally cleaned twice a year can help with preventing major problems from developing. It can also assist in catching problems like cavities early before they grow into major issues. Almost 1 in 5 Americans have untreated cavities, and regular dental visits could help detect them.
- Removing Diseased Teeth: It may sound counterproductive to say that teeth should be removed to prevent major gum disease, but it is one solution. If a tooth is already severely damaged or worse, completely dead, the best thing that can be done is removing it entirely and replacing it with dental implants. If a dead tooth is not removed, the rot that caused it too die could spread throughout the mouth and affect even more teeth. Dentists can identify and remove problem teeth and thereby prevent major gum disease from spreading.
In conclusion, there are three major steps you can take to help prevent major gum disease from spreading throughout your teeth. The first step is to regularly brush and floss your teeth. You should brush at least twice a day. The second step is to visit your family dentist at regular intervals, at least twice a year, to provide regular dental maintenance. And the third step is removing dead or damaged teeth, if necessary, to prevent gum disease from spreading. This may require having one or more teeth removed and replaced with dental implants, but it will benefit your teeth greatly in the long run.