Avoid Tooth Cavity - Life long

Teeth are a very important part of our body. It not only supports your eating mechanism but it is also important every time we smile, talk, frown and make facial expressions. Teeth play an essential role to begin the process of digestion.

Your teeth alignment inside your mouth gives shape to your face. Each type of tooth is unique and important in its own way and each one has a specific function to perform.

Importance of teeth

As already mentioned above teeth are an important element of your mouth. Healthy teeth help us to:-

• chew and digest our food better.
• Helps us in talking and speaking clearly
• Gives us the confidence to smile without being conscious.
• Keeps your mouth odourless.
• Prevents you from experiencing that tooth pain.
• They influence your social and personal lives.
   

A healthy smile can win thousands of hearts and to keep your smile healthy you need to keep your teeth healthy. To keep your teeth healthy you need to maintain the proper oral hygiene.

The proper Oral hygiene.

Oral hygiene is very important to keep your teeth healthy and strong. By brushing our teeth twice daily, maintaining a low-in-sugar diet and regularly visits to our dental professional we can maintain our oral hygiene.

Whatever you consume goes to your stomach and propagates into the entire body. So it's important to have oral hygiene day long.

A proper oral hygiene helps to reduce the risk of various dental issues like

•    Tooth cavity
•    Dental decay
•    Gum diseases
•    Tooth loss
•    Oral infections
•    Bacterial accumulation
•    Plaque build-up
•    Smelly breathe

A visit to a dentist every six months for a routine oral check-up also helps in maintaining oral hygiene and can also help in avoiding tooth cavities.

What is tooth cavity?

Tiny holes in the tooth due to a permanent damage and decaying of tooth is called tooth cavity. Cavities and tooth rot are among the world's normal dental issues. They're particularly normal in kids, teenagers and old peoples. But this doesn’t means those in their twenties, thirties or forties cannot get cavities. If you have teeth you have a risk of getting tooth cavity.

Moreover, if you got a cavity and you are not treating it, you are making things even more worst. They can prompt serious toothache, tooth contamination and tooth loss.

What are the symptoms that show you are dealing with tooth cavity?

Depending upon the extent and location of your tooth symptoms of the cavity can vary. At the beginning of the occurrence of the cavity, there might be no symptoms at all but as the decay gets longer and worsen it starts showing symptoms like:

•    Sudden pain without any cause, and toothache.
•    Sensitivity in the tooth.
•    Mild sharp pain while eating or drinking hot and cold food items.
•    Holes in tooth.
•    Tooth decay.
•    Pain on biting anything.
•    Black stains on the tooth surface.
•    Bad breath.
•    Tenderness on eating sweet dishes.
•    Unpleasant taste in the mouth.

Sometimes you don’t even come to know that your tooth has a cavity until it get worst. So it is very important to visit your dentist on regular intervals and getting your dental checkup done. Your mouth also feels healthy and fresh if you get your cleaning done time to time.

Follow one rule to maintain healthy teeth, visit your dentist whenever you feel pain in your tooth.

What are the causes behind tooth cavity?

Tooth decay is the main reason of tooth cavity. Tooth decay is the process that occurs overtime. There are the following reasons for tooth decay:-

1.    Plaque forms- It is a kind of clear sticky layer that covers your teeth. This happens because of eating too much of sugary items and starchy food and not cleaning the teeth well. If you don’t clean your teeth well after eating sweet and sugary items, bacteria quickly start feeding on it and forms plaque.
Plaque on staying for long on your teeth starts to form tartar which makes it more difficult to clean the plaque off your teeth.

2.    Swollen gums and roots- As tooth rot creates bacteria and acid continues to destroy your teeth moving close to the internal tooth material (pulp). The pulp contains nerves and blood vessels. This leads to swollen pulp and gums. The tooth keeps on rotting and the pain can reach till the bone

3.    Holes in the enamel- When the plaque accumulates on your teeth, its acid remove minerals from enamel. This leads to erosion and holes in enamels. This enamel holes are also known to be the initial stage of cavity. 
If left untreated bacteria through these holes can reach the next layer of your tooth called dentin. Dentin is less resistant to acid and rots very fast. Dentin being in direct contact to nerve starts causing sensitivity.

How to avoid Tooth cavities?

As mentioned above also it is very important to maintain healthy teeth and to avoid tooth cavity.

There are following ways you can opt for to avoid tooth cavity:

•    Brush with toothpaste containing fluoride- make a habit of brushing twice a day especially after your last meal. Use fluoride enriched toothpaste for cleaning the residue of your food from your teeth.

•    Regular visits to dentist- Visit to your dentist at regular intervals helps in keeping teeth healthy. It also helps in early spotting of the problem in your teeth. 

•    Sealants- A sealant is a defensive plastic covering applied to the biting surface of back teeth. It helps in protecting enamel from plaque attack.

•    Avoid sugary items- Too much consumption of sweet and sugary foods leads to creation of plaque. It accelerates the bacteria attack and acid creation that destroys enamel.

•    Flossing- using floss to clean your teeth can help you getting rid of that stuck food particles between your teeth and preventing bacteria formation.

Apart from these few eating habits can also help in avoiding tooth cavity. Few changes you can make in your eating habits are:

•    Limit fruit juice consumption
•    Limit your cookies, chocolates and candies consumption
•    Limit sweet beverages
•    Limit your snacking over junk food
•    Avoid substances that dry your mouth.
•    Avoid sticky food
•    Avoid hard to crack food
•    Stop consuming extremely hot or extremely cold food.
•    Limit your wine consumption
•    Limit coffee and tea consumption

Remember a healthy tooth means healthy mouth and a healthy mouth means a beautiful smile. So keep your teeth healthy and your smile wide.