Indeed, a twice-yearly professional cleaning should be an integral part of your dental hygiene routine.
Maybe you’re the world’s best brusher. Perhaps you never, ever skip flossing and mouthwash. Maybe the very idea of having your teeth professionally cleaned seems pointless because you’re just so conscientious. While at least the first two might be true, having your teeth cleaned professionally by your dentist will never be pointless. Indeed, a twice-yearly professional cleaning should be an integral part of your dental hygiene routine. Let’s find out why…
Maintaining excellent dental hygiene isn’t only about keeping consistent cleaning habits at home. Ensuring that you’re seeing your dentist at least once every six months is a very important aspect of maintaining life-long oral health. There are some things that brushing can’t fix, and a professional cleaning will aid in keeping your teeth in tip-top shape beyond what you can achieve by yourself at home.
Why Is It Important To Get a Professional Cleaning Twice A Year?
Our modern lifestyles are, to put it mildly, full of things that can damage our teeth. Our propensity for coffee, alcohol, and sugar, along with delicious but tooth-staining foods like tomato sauces and curries, results in a perfect storm of reasons to have your teeth professionally cleaned. Indeed, professional cleaning will go a long way in mitigating stains and damage caused by the constant consumption of our favourite foods and sugary beverages.
One of the main reasons why professional cleaning is so important is tartar. However, before we get into that, we need to take a step back to talk about bacteria.
How bacteria affects the mouth
Did you know that your mouth is chock-a-block with bacteria? That’s right, regardless of how frequently you brush your teeth, your body naturally produces bacteria that live happily in your mouth. These bacteria thrive on the foods we eat and the beverages we drink, producing plaque that covers the teeth in a sticky layer of “fuzziness.” While plaque is acidic and can damage the protective enamel covering the teeth, it can at least be removed by brushing and flossing at home. Far more nefarious is what happens when that plaque is not properly cleaned off and becomes a substance known as tartar.
Tartar is particularly bad for your teeth, as unlike plaque, it cannot be removed by at-home methods of dental care. It requires professional cleaning to fully rid the mouth of tartar. Because there are many little nooks and crannies between your teeth and right at the back of your mouth that are easily missed with a toothbrush, tartar can build up without you even knowing it.
Without professional cleaning, tartar will remain on the teeth indefinitely, eating away the protective enamel and creating some problems. Indeed, without the protective enamel, your teeth are far more vulnerable to developing problems such as cavities and infections, while you also risk developing gum disease.
The trouble with Tartar
Because tartar constantly degrades the protective enamel coating on the teeth, it is very damaging to your dental health and can also have a major impact on your general overall health. Because your teeth are more susceptible to damage without enamel, you have a much bigger risk of developing cavities. Cavities can become infected, which is not only deeply painful but also carries the risk of the infection spreading into the bloodstream.
This is a dangerous possibility, as blood infections can quickly turn lethal. No one wants to plan a funeral because of bad dental care, but it can happen. Additionally, tartar also causes damage to the gums, which can result in gum disease. Periodontitis, an advanced form of gingivitis, can result in tooth loss and even bone degradation in the jaw. Moreover, it has been linked to heart diseases and other serious ailments beyond merely the mouth and jaw.
How Can We Help?
At Somerset Dental Care, we not only offer a range of cosmetic and restorative dental treatments, but we also provide basic general dentistry – and a big part of that is routine cleanings for our patients. We recommend booking a full checkup and cleaning every six months, so we can take care of that terrible tartar and keep your teeth in top shape.
To find out more about our services, please have a look here.
To contact us, please call 02 4648 0909 or use our online contact form.
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