How to Provide the Best Dental Care for Your Kids

Parents play an essential role in keeping their children’s teeth healthy and clean. Preventive care starts at home. Here are some ways to promote oral health for your children. 

Avoid sugar

Sugary foods and sweet drinks mix with bacteria in the mouth, forming an acid that attacks tooth enamel, leading to cavities. 

Clean teeth

It is important that parents clean their children’s teeth when they are very young, and do it with them as they get older.

Visit your dentist

It is advised to visit the dentist within 6 months of the eruption of a child’s first tooth. Some dental associations recommend a first dental visit at the age of two years old.

Pacifiers and thumb sucking

Sucking helps babies to relax, but by age two or three, he or she has less need to suck. Foremost, never put sugar, honey or corn syrup on a pacifier.

Help prevent early childhood tooth decay

Once a child has teeth, he or she is susceptible to tooth decay. Mother’s milk, formula, cow’s milk, and fruit juice all contain sugars. Never let your child fall asleep with a bottle of milk, formula or juice or with breast milk still in his or her mouth.

Full Article: Providing the Best Dental Care for Your Kids
Source: The Canadian Dental Association.
In French: Comment procurer les meilleurs soins dentaires pour vos enfants

What Causes Sensitive Teeth?

It is such a burden to suffer from a sensitive tooth. It bothers during meals, while drinking something hot or cold, even sometimes while breathing air through the mouth.

There are many factors that can cause sensitive teeth:

• Brushing the teeth in a hard or strong way can wear out the enamel and cause tooth sensitivity.
• If the gum level recedes, due to gum disease or vigorous brushing, the root becomes exposed, making the tooth sensitive.
• A fracture of a tooth can expose the dentin.
• Cavities and tooth decay can of course cause the teeth to be sensitive.
• Grinding the teeth wears down the enamel.
• Tooth whitening products can cause a temporary sensitivity to the teeth.
• Certain mouthwashes are acidic and long term use can wear away the enamel of the tooth.
• Foods high in acid content, such as soft drinks, citric fruits, or ice-tea, wear out the enamel if consumed excessively.
• Recent dental treatments (fillings, cleanings, root canals or crowns) can cause sensitivity to the repaired tooth for a few weeks.

A severe tooth ache, that is constant and prevents sleep, can be the cause of more serious problems and should be checked by a dentist as soon as possible.

See also in french.