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Dental myths and misconceptions are often a troublesome issue due to the worry and lack of care they can cause. Today, we’d like to bust a few of the common dental myths that we hear most often.

MYTH: You Should Brush Your Teeth Immediately After a Meal.

FACT: It’s better to wait thirty minutes after eating to brush your teeth. Many foods, including citrus fruits, candy, and starches, create acid that stick to your teeth and gums. This acid wears away the enamel on your teeth and helps feed bacteria to form plaque and tartar. While it may seem logical to brush immediately, in reality, your body has natural processes including salivation that help wash away these acids. Brushing your teeth immediately after eating can have negative effects. Using the toothbrush creates an abrasive surface and works the acids into your teeth more than you need. It’s better to wait for your saliva to do its job, drink lots of water, and brush your teeth thirty minutes to an hour after you eat.

 MYTH: Sugary Candy is the Worst Food for Your Teeth.

FACT: While candy might be a cavity causer, foods such as potato chips and crackers, which are still high in sugar but also stick to the teeth and gums, can be more harmful. Most candy simply dissolves, and your saliva is able to wash away the majority of the acidic sugars. With crackers and similar foods, the sugars can stick around in your teeth much longer.

MYTH: The More Sugar You Eat, The Worse Your Teeth Will Be.

FACT: Sugar is found in most food, including bread, fruit, candy, juices, and more. As a result, it is hard to specifically blame poor oral hygiene on eating sugar. We often learn that candy and sugar cause cavities. Yet, you can still have healthy teeth if you eat sugar as long as you practice proper oral hygiene.
Sugar helps cause cavities by giving other bacteria food to eat to produce more acid that then eat away at your teeth. So, if you wash out your mouth with water and brush often, the sugars you consume should not harm your teeth.

MYTH: Baby Teeth Don’t Matter.

FACT: Baby teeth are just as important as adult teeth and should be treated as such. Sure, your child’s baby teeth will fall out eventually, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hold an important role in the future of your child’s oral hygiene. Baby teeth serve as placeholders as a child’s mouth develops, helping maintain the structure of the mouth and jaw, along with creating the proper space for their adult teeth when they grow in. Teaching your child oral hygiene at an early age also helps them to understand the importance of brushing twice a day to keep their teeth and gums healthy.

MYTH: You Should Avoid Brushing/Flossing if it Causes Your Gums to Bleed.

FACT: Bleeding gums is a sign of bad oral hygiene and a symptom of gum disease. If your gums begin to bleed during brushing or flossing your teeth, it means you need to be working harder at keeping your teeth and gums healthy. Often, bleeding gums is a sign that your gums are inflamed from an over-exposure to bacteria and plaque. Use a soft bristled toothbrush and perform gentle flossing daily and the bleeding will eventually stop.

MYTH: You’ll Know When You Have a Cavity.

This is a dangerous myth to believe because it can cause you a lot of pain in the future. Most cavities can not be felt right away. If you’re feeling pain in your mouth, it’s most likely that your cavity has reached a nerve ending in your mouth. This is a bad sign and requires the immediate attention of a dental professional. It’s best to visit your dentist every six months to catch cavities in their early stages to help prevent unnecessary pain and dental procedures.
There are plenty of dental myths to go around, and it is important to understand, that whatever the myth, often the most obvious solution is to continue to practice proper oral hygiene everyday, and do your best to keep your mouth free of bacteria and plaque. Visiting your dentist every six months for a cleaning will also help keep your teeth looking and feeling great. For more questions, contact Water Tower Dental. We’re happy to answer all of your questions and bust any other myths you might come across.
 
 

Cavities are a major concern of any mouth, but it can be hard to know if you have one or not without a trip to the dentist. Luckily there are plenty of signs and symptoms that can help indicate that you might have a cavity in your mouth.
A cavity is a hole on the exterior of your tooth due to the breakdown of your enamel (the outer covering of your tooth). Enamel breakdown is caused by a build-up of plaque and tartar on the teeth. Once enamel is broken down, the tartar is able to slowly eat away at the tooth. Here are signs that you might be developing a cavity, or have one already.

Sensitive Teeth

The most obvious sign is highly sensitive teeth. If hot or cold temperatures irritate your teeth, this is a sign of enamel being worn down. Often, it may be a specific area of sensitivity that can indicate exactly where a cavity might be.

Food Stuck In Your Teeth

We all can get food stuck in our teeth. But, if you’re noticing a frequent occurrence of food sticking in your teeth, this can signify a bigger problem. Also, note how the food is sticking in your teeth. If you notice food often getting stuck at the top of your teeth, in areas that don’t normally get food stuck in them, there is a good chance a cavity is forming.

Opaque or Chalky Spots on the Teeth

When mineral loss occurs on the surface of your teeth, you will notice a change in color. This is one of the best ways to detect early signs of a cavity.

Difficulty Chewing with Certain Teeth

You may notice certain areas of your mouth where it is harder to chew, especially if the foods are high in sugar or are acidic. When tooth decay and cavities form, the innermost areas of the tooth, including blood vessels and nerves (this is known as the pulp) become exposed. These are highly sensitive areas that will cause pain if reached.

Bad Breath

If you practice daily oral hygiene, but notice your breath is still bad, you may have a cavity. Food and bacteria gathering in the crevices of decaying teeth and cavities can cause bad breath. If that is the case, your breath can continue to smell bad even after brushing and flossing.

New Gaps Between your Teeth

If cavities go untreated for a long time, you may start to notice gaps in your front teeth. This is because your tooth has left enough space in your mouth for your teeth to shift.

Swelling in the Gums

When a cavity reaches the pulp of the tooth, your gums will begin to swell and puss will form. This is the most serious sign that you are having an oral issue, and you should immediately seek dental assistance.
If you are experiencing any number of these symptoms, we recommend contacting Water Tower Dental to help assist you. We can fill your cavity, help remove tartar and plaque from your teeth, and help you get on the right track to have a bright and shining smile for years to come.
 

Next to brushing, flossing your teeth is the most important daily practice for great oral health. It helps scrape the plaque off the sides of your teeth and remove harmful bacteria from your gums. However, many of us make common mistakes that keep us from doing the best floss job possible. Thankfully, all of these mistakes are easily fixable, and after a short read, you can better your technique and ensure healthy gums and shining teeth.

1. Flossing Too Much or Too Little

To be truly effective, flossing should be done daily. Plaque and tartar can build up quickly, and only flossing every few days will do very little in helping keep your teeth free of harmful particles and bacteria. However, there is such a thing as flossing too much. There’s no need to floss more than once a day. In fact, you can begin to harm your gums if you floss too much. Creating a simple routine that helps you floss only once a day (after you shower in the morning, or before you go to bed at night) and sticking to it will help guarantee you floss just the right amount.

2. Using the Wrong Motion

When flossing, your main objective is to scrape the plaque off the sides of your teeth. This is essential to keeping plaque and bacteria from moving inside pockets of your gums. In order to scrape the plaque off the sides of your teeth, you should be using an up and down motion. However, many use a front and back motion. Remember, you are not shining a shoe. Push against the side of the tooth with your floss and scrap down on the top teeth and up on the bottom.

3. Not Cleaning Both Sides of Your Teeth

When scraping the sides of your teeth, make sure that you scrape both sides. It’s not enough to slip the floss between your teeth then snap it back out. You need to consciously push against both sides of your teeth and push the plaque off. Start on one side, then move to the next.

4. Take Your Time

Many people don’t realize how much time they should realistically spend on each tooth. For the best results you should spend a few seconds on each side of a tooth, scraping about ten times. Plaque is hard to remove, and doing a quick once-over will not help much. You need to make sure you really scrape on each side of the tooth until you hear a squeak (that’s the sound of your teeth becoming squeaky clean).

5. Stopping When Your Gums Bleed

Sometimes, especially if you haven’t flossed in a while, your gums can start bleeding when flossing. Gum disease causes this. Your gums are inflamed and will start bleeding when becoming irritated. This is because you have too much plaque and bacteria in your mouth. Rather than stopping, you need to continue flossing. If you avoid the mistakes above and floss daily, the bleeding will subside over time and eventually stop.
Flossing is extremely important for great oral health. By avoiding these common mistakes and practicing great oral hygiene, you will have a bright smile for many years. If you have any questions, or would like to talk to a professional about your oral health, contact Water Tower Dental Care. We are happy to help.

There are a few factors to consider when it comes to finding toothpaste that works for you. Mainly, does it have the effective ingredients to help fight plaque build-up and tooth decay? Once you have determined that, you will want to choose from a variety of toothpastes that can help in specific ways depending on what kind of cleaning you’re looking for.

Most toothpaste has a basic set of components that makes them what they are. First, abrasive agents that help remove food and bacteria from your teeth. These are typically ingredients such as calcium carbonate. Thickeners are added to tooth pastes to add a thicker volume to the paste, which helps maintain a consumer-expected texture. For moisture retention, humectants are added, which keep the toothpaste from drying out. Detergents help make your toothpaste foam when brushing by using ingredients like sodium laurel sulfate. And, of course, flavoring is added to toothpastes with artificial sweeteners to make brushing your teeth a more enjoyable experience.
You will most likely find some kind of variation of these basic ingredients in most toothpaste. They are the essential makeup that makes toothpaste what it is.
The most essential toothpaste ingredient, however, is fluoride. For the past 50 years, fluoride has helped to significantly lower tooth decay and cavities. A naturally occurring mineral, fluoride helps protect your teeth by making your tooth enamel stronger and helping reverse the damage that occurs from bacteria acids breaking down teeth. It is essential to use toothpaste with fluoride, as it’s the number one ingredient to help protect your teeth.
Most toothpaste in the dental aisle of your local pharmacy or grocery store will contain these ingredients. But you’ve probably noticed dozens of different toothpastes in your pharmacy. That’s because many toothpastes offer additional help specific to a certain problem.
There is toothpaste that is specific to tartar control. This toothpaste helps remove the buildup of plaque and tartar on your teeth. When plaque isn’t removed properly, it hardens and turns into tartar. These toothpastes use ingredients such as pyrophosphates and zinc citrate to break down plaque and tartar before it becomes a bigger issue.
There are also toothpastes for Sensitive Teeth. Many people have trouble with consuming hot or cold liquids and chewing hard foods. This is because they have nerve endings that are more sensitive than other mouths. With the help of potassium nitrate or strontium chloride, these toothpastes help by blocking pathways to the nerves that are attached to the teeth.
Whitening toothpastes are also available. These toothpastes offer additional abrasives that can help scrub away stains and bring your teeth back to their original whiteness.
When choosing toothpaste, you should always look for the ADA approval. The American Dental Association has been working hard for years to ensure that the toothpastes they approve are safe and contain ingredients that will protect your teeth.
If you have more questions about which toothpastes are best for your teeth, contact Water Tower Dental. With a simple checkup we can determine the key weakness to your oral hygiene and recommend several options to help bring your smile to its brightest potential.