Stay Healthy by Keeping your Mouth Healthy

Every year I feel like most individuals try to make goals to better their life. Usually this happens as a new years resolution, but this year has given many people around the world more of a chance to actually focus on those goals.  This year  think dental health can make a significant jump across the country and even the world. This can be made possible by the extra time being available to many americans who are now forced to stay home or work from home.  So this year lets go over a few things that can help keep your mouth healthy and bump up your dental hygiene to a new level.

The first thing to do while staying home and working from you new office or in many cases kitchen is to grab a glass and fill it with water.  Water is a great benefit to your dental health and actually increases many other healthy areas of your body as well.  I prefer to actually use a nalgene or special water bottle for my daily intake.  This allows me to feel like it is more of a treat than a requirement  By doing this my mouth is able to produce more saliva and help clean and keep those harmful bacteria from growing.  It also helps rinse away more food particles so they are not able to start the plaque buildup.  To me this is a great help and the more you are able to drink in the day the better.  Now there is a limit to how much water you should drink, but many health experts usually say between 6 to 8 glasses a day is a good start.  Being close to the kitchen I found that this is rather simple to do while working from home.  So grab and extra glass now and then.  But another area that you can now really jump up on is not drinking bad beverages.

 

Coffee has been a staple of my morning for decades and I do believe that it has hurt my dental health a good amount.  Unfortunately, the extra acid that it brings to my mouth breaks down my enamel faster than it normally would.  It also causes massive amounts of staining.  This is hard to overcome with any amount of normal dental routine that involves brushing.  The toothpaste I use has little effect on getting rid of the coffee staining. Now coffee is not all bad but alternatives can be much better for your health.

 

I suggest trying to sip more tea instead of coffee in the morning.  I know the convenience of coffee is what normally wins most people over but now that electric pots exist the convenience is really the same. You can now brew a hot pot of water in a minute or two and then just fill up your cup with a tea packet and be set.  In many ways this is actually faster than the old fashioned coffee pot. So don't get caught up in stereotypes and break the chain of bad dental health.  Now you can have your cake and eat it too, by drinking highly caffeinated tea with less acid and staining involved. So give it a try and work on drinking more water.  Stay safe out there!.