The smile is a big part of a lot of social functions that you are going to find yourselves involved in on any given day, but the sad reality is that we don’t do much to take care of it. In fact, some people don’t even do the bare minimum that is recommended by your local professional dentist.
So what is it that you can do to take care of your teeth? Well, obviously, you need to find a dentist you trust to give you better instruction into what you can do for your own teeth and your own personal issues, but there is some agreement on the general points. You need to make sure, of course, that you are spending the appropriate amount of time, money, and effort on any given day on brushing and flossing your teeth properly. You need to get the proper dental floss and the proper tooth paste, too; just doing some brushing with water, it isn’t going to be enough to make sure that your smile is going to look good or anything, or that you will keep your teeth from rotting or softening with the plaque that they’ll be encountering.
Then, of course, there is the obvious thing that you need to do; actually go and visit your local professional dentist at his dental office. I mean, you can’t do much if you just sit around at home and brush and floss your teeth yourself; that is more of a protective measure than a measure to make sure that your teeth are going to stay healthy. And, as someone who has (regularly, in the past) put off going to see his dentist, let me tell you; if you are having pains or sensitivity in your teeth or in your gums, it’s time, right then, to consider calling your dentist and setting up an appointment. Sure, you can wait a day or two to see if the pain will subside, but I don’t recommend waiting much longer than that, because you can be missing some very real issues. Dentistry is a valuable aspect of personal health, even though we don’t often treat it as such, and the longer that you let something be out of place, the worse it will continue to get.
For an easy example, I can very simply use a real world issue that I had. During college, I didn’t often go to see any medical professional (because honestly, I always hated going to see doctors and dentists. Not any fear or anything, it was just an hour out of my day, plus travel time, and I didn’t see a very big payoff in doing so, so I stopped doing it). Maybe half way through Junior year, I began to feel a bit of a pain and some sensitivity in a tooth. Now, thankfully, I have an immense pain tolerance for this sort of thing, so it didn’t slow me down or anything like that, but it was noticeable from time to time and no mistake. Anyhow, the pain was probably the beginning of a toothache which was related to a cavity, but I didn’t go and get professional help to see what was going on, so it got worse. Eventually, part of the tooth was coming out, the tooth having become so softened that it was literally rotting out of the mouth. The cavity, that had once been a surface issue and nothing more serious than that, had now become such an issue that the tooth basically came out. Still, assuming the worst was over, I let it go, and just went on with my life. That was a big mistake, sadly, because let me tell you, that was when it got really bad. Instead of getting treatment, I allowed it to become a dental abscess, which is basically an infection. Eventually, I had to seek treatment and find a reliable and welcoming dental office after I had to go to the hospital to get immediate treatment for a dental abscess that had begun to spread up the nerve. Interesting fact; when your nerve gets infected, the infection moves to your brain. If it hits your brain, you go into a coma and you are not very likely to come back from said coma.
The moral of the story that I’m telling you is that, when it all comes down to it, you need to be taking your dental health seriously and seeing the appropriate professional dentist for your issue in order to make sure that you will be able to stay in good health as long as possible. Trust me, your body will thank you.
