It’s important to become aware of the habits you should be avoiding, if you want to enjoy excellent dental health.
So, here are 5 of the most common mistakes that are damaging people’s dental health:
1) Brushing Too Hard
Most people’s chief aim when brushing is to end up with a nice white set of teeth, and this leads some people to scrub much too hard in an effort to remove stains.
Bushing too hard can damage the enamel coating that surrounds your teeth. With that protective enamel layer weakened, plaque has a free reign to eat into your teeth.
Ironically, brushing too hard actually achieves the opposite effect and gives the teeth a darker shade, since enamel is the whitest part!
Don’t brush your teeth as though you’re scrubbing a red wine stain from a carpet! You don’t need to apply much pressure at all to remove everyday stains.
2) Not Brushing For Long Enough
Your dentist recommends that you brush for a full 2 minutes, yet data collected by Beam Technologies has shown that the average adult spends just 46 seconds brushing their teeth.
That’s a poor effort by anyone’s standards!
Research has shown that you are 50% more likely to brush for long enough if you use a timer.
Crack out your smartphone and fire up the timer app when you brush for an instant boost to your dental health.
3) Uneven Brushing
People tend to begin brushing with enthusiasm, before getting bored and finally giving up. This means that the corner of your mouth that you begin with gets a good clean, but the rest gets nothing but a cursory going over.
We can, once again, turn to a timer to improve our habits here. Simply switch to a new quadrant of the mouth every 30 seconds.
Starting in a different area of the mouth each time you brush can also help.
4) Fruit Juice Before Bed
Fruit juices and smoothies have become extremely popular in the last few years, especially as an easy and delicious way to get one of your five-a-day.
The problem, though, is that these juices are anything but good for your teeth. They’re both full of sugar, and strongly acidic; a nightmare combination for your teeth.
More and more adults who can’t sleep tend to get out of bed and grab a glass of juice, before going back to sleep.
Leaving this acidic and sugary residue on your teeth all night while you sleep is not a good idea! The acid weakens your teeth’s defenses, whilst plaque bacteria thrives on the sugar.
If you do get up in the night, make that drink a nice, clean, cold glass of water instead.
5) Not Flossing
Nobody enjoys flossing their teeth, but unfortunately, it’s a must!
Toothbrushes simply can’t get in-between your teeth, and that means that if you’re giving the dental floss a miss, you’re leaving all sorts of nasties in those nooks and crannies.
Even if you brush diligently twice a day, the food particles and plaque bacteria that collect between your teeth can lead to Gingivitis if you don’t floss.
So knuckle down, crack out the dental floss, and make it a habit to floss every day before you brush your teeth.
Contact our dental experts today to schedule an appointment and find out how our Invisalign treatments can help you get the smile you always imagined. You won’t be afraid to let people see your teeth when they’re aligned exactly as they should be.
