Six New Year Dental Resolutions For Healthier Teeth And Gums

If you haven’t made any resolutions yet, take a look at some of these suggestions by our Burton dentists, designed to help you have a healthier mouth in 2025.

The festive period is now well and truly over and many of us will be almost back into the same routine as before it all started. Some of us will simply carry on as before, while others may have made new year resolutions aimed at changing their lives. In many cases, these will fail, often due to expectations being higher than reality. Resolutions can be useful though, especially if they are easy to carry out, often making small but useful changes to our lives.

Today, we are going to look at some suggestions for resolutions which we feel will be helpful to patients of SG Dental and Implant Centre. All of these are relatively easy to do and we feel that should you succeed in achieving all, or at least most, of them you will notice a significant improvement in the health of your teeth and gums.

Brush for the full two minutes

If you come from the ‘give my teeth a quick brush’ school of thought, then you are already failing at this. If you think that you do brush for the recommended two minutes then you may be failing as well. If you fall into the latter category, we suggest that you set a timer when you brush your teeth; we think you might be surprised how far short you fall. For both groups, use a timer set for two minutes when you brush your teeth. Do this both morning and night for several weeks at least, until you have established how long this is. Brushing for this length of time will help to remove food debris and unwanted bacteria from the teeth and gum line. This is a simple thing to do that can make a real difference, especially for the ‘quick brush’ brigade.

Use dental floss

Yes, we do understand that you may have tried it and didn’t get on with it. Our response to that is ‘try again’ please. The reality is that although it may be a little fiddly at first, most patients are able to floss their teeth quite quickly and effectively after a short while. Once you have done this, you should continue to floss your teeth on a daily basis. This will really help you to avoid problems like gum disease. For those who genuinely are unable to use floss correctly, perhaps those with mobility issues, you could try floss picks which have a short handle with a section of dental floss stretched at the end. If you even struggle with these then a waterpik which blasts fine jets of water between the teeth might be helpful. Mostly though, we are sure that you will be able to use dental floss so it’s time to buy some and start practising.

Don’t be too ‘economical’ with your toothbrush

Being ‘green’ is good and most of us probably think more about recycling and being less ‘throw away’ than we used to be. When it comes to toothbrushes or the head of an electric toothbrush though, this isn’t a good idea at all. After around three months of use, these will have less than healthy bristles and will be unable to clean your teeth and gum line as they should. Don’t economise on your toothbrush and make sure that you replace them every three months or even more frequently if you are an ‘aggressive’ brusher (note .. you shouldn’t be as this can damage your tooth enamel).

Drink more water (and less sugary drinks)

A drink of ‘pop’ used to be a once a week, or twice at the most, treat for those of a certain age. That is not the case these days and there is a huge range of soft drinks to choose from, many also being carbonated. Some of these are traditional drinks such as lemonade, while others are promoted as sports drinks or energy drinks. What nearly all of these have in common is that they contain a lot of sugar, and, not only that, many are very acidic too. This acidity is thought to be one of the main causes behind the increase in the number of people presenting themselves to their local Burton dentist with eroded tooth enamel.

In an ideal world, we would recommend that our Burton patients avoid these drinks, but we also know that this will almost certainly not happen. It is good that you understand the potential harm that they can cause though and would recommend that you replace them with water as much as possible. Not only will water not damage tooth enamel, but is excellent for keeping your mouth hydrated and thereby helping to reduce the risk of gum disease.

Quit smoking

This should probably be at the top of our list as smoking is extremely harmful for our oral health and is one of the biggest factors that cause gum disease. Not only that, smokers are at a much higher risk than non smokers of oral, or mouth, cancers which can be life changing and even fatal in some cases. There are so many good reasons not to smoke that hopefully, this is one resolution that you have already made.

Buy nail clippers

If you bite your fingernails, please don’t. Teeth can chip or crack if they slide off the fingernail and snap together. Not only can this cause damage which can eventually lead to tooth decay but can spoil your smile too. While you can have any teeth damaged in this way restored using dental veneers, it is cheaper to buy yourself some nail clippers and use those instead of your teeth.

Hopefully you will find these suggestions useful and that you can improve your oral health with these few simple pieces of advice. In the meantime, please allow us to wish you all a belated happy new year and remind you that if you need to contact us for advice or for an appointment, you can contact SG Dental and Implant Centre on 01283 845345.