breath

Flossing has been making headlines recently thanks to the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The most recently released guidelines did not include flossing, which was once a recommended activity for daily health. But does this mean you shouldn’t floss every day? No, not at all. Not flossing can lead to serious dental problems. Trust us - we’ve seen how skipping the string can damage your oral health over and over again.

Though the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t include flossing in its 2015 dietary guidelines due to a lack of evidence, the department stated that this does not imply that flossing is not an important oral hygiene practice. In fact, the department stated that cleaning between teeth with floss is an important oral hygiene practice, and, along with professional cleanings and tooth brushing, has been shown to disrupt and remove plaque, according to the American Dental Association (ADA).
When it comes down to it, the U.S. Department of Health and Services didn’t include flossing this year because of a lack of documented research that flossing benefits you, not because it doesn’t actually provide any benefits. Flossing research is notoriously known for being high in costs and taking a long time, which explains why there isn’t a substantial amount of research showing its benefits. After all, it can take years to develop gum disease or tooth decay due to not flossing.
Here are four reasons why flossing every day is extremely important, and why you definitely shouldn’t stop now.

Clears Out Plaque in Tight Spaces

Sure, brushing can take care of plaque. But brush bristles can’t effectively clean out the tight spaces in between your teeth. And mouthwash typically isn’t powerful enough to move plaque that’s stuck between teeth. This is where floss comes in. Floss and interdental cleaners can clean out plaque that builds up between your teeth better than any other tools. Getting rid of that plaque will help to prevent cavities from forming in between your teeth and lower your risk of developing gum disease.

Fights Off Gum Disease and Tooth Decay

Scraps of food and bacteria can easily get stuck in the areas where your teeth and gums meet. These particles and bacteria can eventually transform from plaque into tartar, a hard deposit that can lead to tooth decay and gum disease.
If you don’t get rid of hard-to-reach plaque with floss, you may notice that your gums become red and swollen and bleed easily. This is a sign that you have gingivitis, a mild form of gum disease. Left untreated, the plaque and tartar can spread deeper into your gum line, causing more severe gum disease (periodontitis), which can lead to tooth and bone loss. Bacteria can also eat away at your enamel and teeth, causing tooth decay.

Gets Your Teeth Looking as Good as New

Nobody wants to look at a smile only to find big clumps of plaque and rotting food between the teeth. Flossing your teeth can help to make your smile look beautiful by keeping it clear of the nasty stuff that can build up inside your mouth. This will result in a bolder, brighter smile.

Fresher Breath

Flossing isn’t all about oral health and appearance. It can also make your breath smell better than ever! If you don’t floss, food can sit in between your teeth and rot for weeks. As you can imagine, this doesn’t make your breath smell too great. Flossing will keep rotting food particles out of your mouth and allow saliva to effectively move through your teeth, keeping everything clean and smelling great!
Flossing every day is essential to your oral health. Without flossing, you wouldn’t be able to get rid of hard-to-reach plaque, which can lead to serious gum disease and tooth decay over time. Learn more about how often you should floss and common flossing mistakes here.

Food products like garlic and onion are known to cause bad breath. But did you know that some foods can actually help your breath smell good? It’s true. Mints aren’t the only solution to a stinky mouth. Here are five foods that can actually make your breath smell great!

Dairy

Dairy isn’t just great for your pearly whites. Dairy products like yogurt and cheese are also pretty good at fighting off bad breath. Cheese neutralizes acids after you’ve eaten, making sure that they don’t give off any sour smells. Probiotic yogurts with live active cultures can reduce sulfite compounds in your mouth that cause bad breath. The vitamin D in these yogurts also reduces smelly mouth bacteria.

Crunchy Apples and Celery

An apple a day keeps the smell away. Crisp and crunchy foods like apples and celery actually clean your teeth, removing soft and sticky food that’s stuck there. These foods can also push plaque away from your teeth when you bite into them. Just because they do some scrubbing doesn’t mean you should skip brushing or flossing. But apples and celery are a great snack between meals to keep your mouth smelling fresh.

Fennel Seeds

Fennel seeds are extremely flavorful and aromatic, so it’s no surprise they can keep bad breath at bay. These seeds work to neutralize bad smells in your mouth. But along with that, they actually have antibacterial properties, giving them the power to fight off bacteria that causes bad breath.

Ginger

If you’ve ever taken a bite out of ginger, you know it packs a punch. Ginger is regularly used to clean your palate. And it also gets rid of bad breath with its powerful flavor. Just make sure you like the flavor of ginger before you bite into it or make a drink with it, because you can’t plug your nose to escape its flavor.

Fruits That Pack a Lot of Vitamin C

Along with keeping your body healthy, vitamin C keeps bad breath away. The bacteria that causes bad breath can’t actually grow very well in environments filled with vitamin C. Fruits that also contain a lot of water, like melons and citrus fruit, can wash rotting food and bacteria away. Try eating strawberries, cantaloupe or oranges next time you notice your breath smelling funky.
We hope you give these foods a try next time you have bad breath. If you can’t seem to get rid of the smell, feel free to contact Water Tower Dental Care. If you have a dental issue causing your bad breath, we’ll get to the bottom of it!

When it comes to taking care of your teeth, there’s a lot more you can do than just brushing and flossing. In fact, those are just the first two steps to keeping your teeth healthy. Adding oral probiotics to your teeth-cleaning routine will help to ensure that you keep cavities away and an attractive smile going.

What Are Probiotics?

Probiotics have been growing in popularity for years because of their ability to improve digestive health. But in recent years, probiotics have also been found to improve your oral health by naturally getting rid of cavity-causing plaque. So what exactly are probiotics and how are they so helpful?
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health defines probiotics as live organisms that are intended to have health benefits. Typically, these live organisms are good bacteria. Yes, you read that right. Bacteria can be good for you - and even for good your teeth. Probiotics work by crowding out the bad bacteria in your mouth with good bacteria. The more good bacteria there are in your mouth, the less room there will be for bad bacteria to grow and rot your teeth, slowing down the plaque build-up process. While foods like yogurt are full of probiotics, the probiotics derived by this kind of food can’t fight bacteria in your mouth like it can in your stomach.

 How Can Probiotics Help Your Mouth and Teeth?

So now that you know that probiotics can cause less bad bacteria to grow in your mouth, you’re probably wondering how exactly that helps your teeth and mouth. Evora, a maker of oral probiotics, notes that there are three major ways that the ProBiora3 probiotics improve your oral health:

• They support gum and tooth health.
  Since less bad bacteria will be growing on your teeth and gums, probiotics will help to keep your teeth healthy. Mayo Clinic writes that high levels of bad bacteria can cause gum disease and tooth decay. 
• They make your breath smell better.
  Stinky breath is caused by bad bacteria sitting in your mouth. Since probiotics don’t allow a lot of room for the bacteria that cause bad breath to grow, your mouth should smell a lot better.
• They whiten your teeth over time.
  ProBiora3 probiotics from Evora produce low doses of hydrogen peroxide. Over time, these low doses gently whiten your teeth. Unlike other teeth whitening treatments, you won’t feel any sensitivity or gum irritation from this natural teeth whitening process.

Probiotics are an important addition to everyone’s dental health routine. Though they don’t replace brushing and flossing, probiotics do support these activities, making your teeth and gums even healthier. All you have to do is eat probiotics a few times a month to make a difference in your mouth.
If you’re interested in learning more about probiotics or purchasing them for the first time, speak to our dental experts at Water Tower Dental Care. We would love to help you pick the best type of probiotics for your teeth and gums and help you better understand how they make your smile look its best.

You may have heard of the many health benefits of tea, but did you know tea is really good for your teeth as well? Both black and green tea contain catechins, also known as antioxidants, which help remove harmful bacteria from your mouth.
However, tea does so much more than that. Next to water, it’s the most helpful liquid you can drink. Here are five ways tea is helping your oral health.

Tea Helps Your Gums

Tea is known to have anti-inflammatory elements that help control swelling, bleeding, and infection in your gums. By replacing bad bacteria with good bacteria in your mouth and helping prevent your gums from becoming inflamed, tea is a great way to help fight against periodontal disease.

It Helps Prevent Cavities

Along with clearing out bacteria, tea also helps lower the acidic levels of saliva and plaque in your mouth. Acidic elements are what eat away at the teeth to create cavities. When tea washes away this acidity, it’s harder for cavities to start.

It Keeps Your Teeth In Your Mouth

That’s right, not only can it keep your gums and teeth healthy, it can also help keep your teeth from falling out when you’re older. Studies have shown that men and women who drink one or more cups of tea a day hold onto their natural teeth for longer.

Tea Improves Your Breath

Bad breath derives from bacteria that grow in the far back of your throat, a place that’s hard to reach with a toothbrush. Without proper care, the bacteria breed enough to cause a foul smell. Tea helps by washing away and killing the bacteria, making it easy for your breath to smell fresh all day.

It Helps Prevent Oral Cancer

Antioxidants help every part of the body fight cellular damage and tumor growth. When you drink tea, you’re filling your mouth with antioxidants that are able to help keep your mouth from developing cancerous tumors.
To better help your teeth and mouth, you should know the best way to drink your tea. First, green and black tea are both good for you, but green is definitely better. Black tea is slightly more processed, which results in less antioxidants. And if you like white teeth, black tea is better avoided as it can stain those pearly whites.
To make tea correctly, boil water and pour the hot water over the tealeaves in a ceramic cup. Then, cover the cup with a saucer for 2 to 3 minutes as the tea steeps. This will help get the most out of every bag of tea.
Avoid adding sugar to your tea as bacteria loves to feed off of sugar. Also avoid bottled iced tea as it tends to have citric elements that can help raise the acidic levels of saliva.
If you have any more questions about how tea can help your teeth or if you would like to visit Chicago’s number one rated dentistry, contact Water Tower Dental today. We’re happy to help answer any questions and put you on the path to a better, brighter smile.

We all hate dealing with bad breath. Whether it’s our own or someone else’s, it’s never a fun experience. And even though you may brush, floss, and use mouthwash everyday, you still find that your breath can become rather nasty by the end of the day (or less fortunately, the middle). Great oral hygiene is a start to combating bad breath, however, sometimes our bad breath is directly related to the food we do (and don’t) eat. There are plenty of foods that cause bad breath, and some that help fight the awful smells. Here’s our list of the top foods for each.

The Worst Foods For Your Breath

Garlic
No one should be surprised to learn that garlic is tough on breath. Though extremely healthy for you, it’ll leave you mouth steaming with funky smells. This is because, not only is it a hard smell to wash out of the mouth, garlic is absorbed into the bloodstream by a chemical known as allyl methyl sulfide. As it travels through your blood, it makes it to your lungs and pushes out of you like smoke out a chimney. Brush your teeth all you want, it can’t save you from the power of smelly garlic.
Onions
Similar to garlic, onions contain an amino acid known as allin. Once cut, the amino acid turns to propenyl sulfuric acid, the chemical responsible for making you tear up when cutting this veggie. And if you think it smells bad when cutting, just imagine how your friends feel when they have to hold a conversation with you. Eating raw onions can send your breath down a slippery slope from bad to so much worse, so we recommend cooking onions before eating, at least for the sake of your friends.
Coffee
Can something that smells good give you bad breath? Coffee is your case and point. The acidity of coffee can linger inside your mouth for a long time, making saliva its sour friend. As well, the acidity from the coffee can neutralize the acid in your stomach allowing gastric juices to make an appearance out of the mouth. Not good for breath… Not good for anything.
Curry
The mother of all bad breath inducers, Indian curries are a mix of onion, garlic, fennel, and other spicy ingredients that will send anyone in a 3-foot radius of you running for the hills (if they don’t pass out first).

The Best Foods For Your Breath

Crunchy Fruit and Veggies
To combat all of these breath-killing foods, you need a defense strategy, and first in line are crunchy fruits and vegetables. Apples, carrots, celery and other fiber-rich fruits and veggies are your natural toothbrush. Their fibrous texture is able to push plaque and nasty food stuck in your teeth out of your mouth. As well, they increase saliva production, which helps rinse out the mouth.
Yogurt
Yogurt is truly an amazing food. It’s made of probiotics, bacteria that’s good for you. When consumed, it’s able to reduce the level of hydrogen sulfide in the mouth (that’s the stuff that makes your breath bad in the first place). Of course, make sure you’re choosing the right yogurt, the kind with active cultures. Avoid any yogurt that has too much sugar or is over-processed.
Vitamin C-heavy Fruits
Fruits high in vitamin C such as berries, oranges, and melons can help reduce the amount of bacteria growth in the mouth. High in vitamins and acidity, it’s able to keep bacteria at bay along with helping prevent periodontal disease.
Fresh Herbs
For those of you still wondering what that little green piece of grass on your dinner plate is, here’s your answer: parsley. A natural palate cleanser, parsley contains chlorophyll which helps reduce bad breath smells, as well as makes your mouth lose the taste of all the food you may have eaten. But don’t stop there; many herbs can help fight breath including coriander, spearmint, tarragon, and rosemary.
Water
Of course, the simplest food of all is one of the best to help cure bad breath. Much of the time, bad breath is caused by food that’s just stuck in your teeth and gums. Water helps flush out the mouth and gets it to a point of freshness. It’s like putting your dishes in the dishwasher. They don’t just sit there with the hopes that all the food stuck on the plate goes away. They’re bombarded with water splashing against them so they can be clean and clear. The same goes for your teeth, the more water you drink, the fresher your mouth will be.
Though some foods cannot be avoided and will give you harsh breath from time to time. Most of the time, the best way to keep your breath fresh and healthy is by drinking lots of water, then brushing and flossing after every meal. Don’t wait too long afterwards because that’s prime time for bacteria to build up and make a home. If you want fresh breath proper oral hygiene will go a long way.