How Can Diet Affect My Dental Health?
Your diet can have a big impact on your dental health, even if you brush and floss regularly. Your body needs sufficient nutrients in order to fight infection and to repair tissues, including gum tissue. Making sure you have a balanced diet will benefit your general health and your dental health. Your teeth can also be affected by how frequently you eat certain foods.
Acid Erosion and Your Dental Health
Every time you eat a food that is high in carbohydrate or sugars your mouth will become more acidic and your teeth will undergo a process called demineralisation. During demineralisation, essential minerals are leached from your tooth enamel, weakening and softening it. After a while your mouth will become less acidic allowing a process called re-mineralisation to occur where some of these minerals are redeposited back into your tooth enamel, enabling it to re-harden. Over time, repeated exposure to these acids will gradually wear away your tooth enamel, causing acid erosion.
Reducing the Risk of Acid Erosion
While some acid erosion is unavoidable, you can minimise the effects by making smarter food choices, particularly when snacking. Choosing tooth friendly options such as hard cheese, sugar-free yoghurt or crunchy fruits and veggies can be useful. Very starchy or sugary foods should be enjoyed as part of your main meal.
If you prefer, we can discuss your diet in more detail with you and can suggest ways to improve it to help your dental health. There is no need to worry, as we know it isn’t practical to cut out all treats, but we might be able to come up with some ideas to appeal to you. Please just ask us as we want to help you. You can contact us on (03) 9419 7022 or visit the practice at 3/55 Victoria St, Fitzroy VIC 3065.
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Oral Hygiene Education
Oral hygiene appointments are an effective preventative dental treatment and this particular procedure is very gentle and non-invasive. We use the very latest ultrasonic scalars combined with water jets to comfortably remove any tartar build-up, leaving your teeth beautifully clean.
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Fissure sealants consist of a thin protective layer of a special and very hard-wearing plastic material that is painted over the chewing surfaces of back teeth. These surfaces are particularly vulnerable towards decay due to the nature of their design. If you look at these teeth you will see they have lots of very deep fissures that can easily trap food and bacteria. SV Dental Centre prefers to seal these surfaces whenever we can and is why we may suggest this treatment for you.
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SV Dental Centre recommends the use of custom-fitted mouth guards for adults who love to play contact and some non-contact sports. Every year there are thousands of dental related injuries as a result of playing sports and many of these could have been avoided or minimised with the use of a good quality mouth guard.
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Advanced gum disease or periodontal disease is relatively common and can become chronic, requiring ongoing treatment to keep it under control. This might mean more frequent oral hygiene appointments or we may recommend you have your gums regularly deep cleaned in a treatment called scaling and root planing.
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Ideally we’d like to see you every six months for a regular examination and we encourage you to attend these appointments even if you think your teeth are fine. Often the initial signs of dental problems will create few, if any symptoms but early detection can help minimise the damage to your teeth and gums and any treatment is likely to be quicker and less invasive.
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