Home Care
Taking care of your oral hygiene is a daily routine. Dental home care involves necessary steps that you have to follow to keep your teeth, gums, and oral tissues clean and healthy.
If followed correctly, you can minimize the chances of potential dental complications and diseases.
However, regular visits to your dentist are still essential. The following article helps you understand the concept of home care.
Tooth Brushing
We recommend that you brush your teeth twice a day, in the morning and before you go to bed. Brushing your teeth before bed helps you eliminate the plaque, germs, and food debris accumulated throughout the day.
Ensure that you brush the teeth properly because wrong brushing techniques are as good as not brushing at all. Also, ensure that you use an ADA-approved soft bristle toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste.
Here is how to do it correctly:
- Place your toothbrush at a 45-degree angle to your gums and then brush in a gentle, circular motion to remove any plaque.
- Brush both the outer and inner plus the biting surfaces of your teeth.
- Use the tip of your toothbrush to clean the inside of the Incisors ( front teeth).
- Time your brushing and ensure that you are brushing for a full two minutes.
- Gently brush your tongue to eliminate plaque, bad mouth order, and other potential oral health issues.
We also recommend electric toothbrushes because they are much easier to use and remove plaque more effectively than manual brushing.
You only need to gently place the brush on your gums and teeth and allow it to do the rest.
Perform Daily Flossing
For excellent dental care at home, you need to treat flossing as crucial as brushing your teeth. It helps clean spaces between your teeth and under the gum lines.
Flossing is also necessary for destroying plaque colonies, preventing potential damage to the gum, teeth, and bones. You only have to do it once a day for optimum benefits.
Here is a proper flossing procedure:
- Break off around 12 to 16 inches of dental floss. Wind most of the floss around your middle fingers, leaving around 1 to 2 inches of the floss for the teeth.
- Hold the floss tight with your thumbs and your forefingers to guide it as you insert it between the teeth in a sawing motion.
- Gently move the floss up and rub it against either side of your teeth. Do not glide the floss on your gums as it can cause scratches or bruises to the gums.
- Curve the floss at the base of your tooth to form a C shape under the gumline. The curve allows the flows to penetrate the space between your gum and tooth. Ensure that the C shape is created against both teeth and is allowed to move up and down the side of both teeth.
- Repeat the process with every tooth and ensure that each tooth gets a clean new floss.
Flossing can be difficult sometimes, especially for children and adults with conditions like arthritis. In such cases, you can get a tool like ready-to-use dental flossers from any drug store to help you floss your teeth.
In some cases, irrigators such as a Waterpik will be recommended and essential to keep teeth and gums healthy.
Rinsing Your Mouth
It is very crucial to be rinsing your mouth with fresh water after brushing and after every meal. In case you want to rinse your mouth with an over-the-counter product, we recommend that you seek a dentist’s advice first.
You can also use other dental aids recommended by your dentist or dental hygienist. Such dental assistance includes rubber tip stimulators, tongue cleaners, fluoride, and medicated rinses.
Another essential product to include in your home dental care kit is mouthwash. It helps reduce the amount of acid in your mouth, cleans hard to brush areas around and inside the gums, and remineralize your teeth.
Specific mouthwash brands are ideal for children and people with sensitive teeth. Therefore it is good to ask your dental hygienist for mouthwash recommendations.
