Enjoy Christmas While Maintaining Your Oral Health

Over the festive period, our teeth and gums can suffer. Our Burton dental team explains how you can avoid this.

With just a few weeks to go, we are sure that many of you are looking forward to the Christmas break and a chance to socialise and meet up with friends, family and work colleagues. There is much to be done in the meantime of course with food and presents to be bought.

The Christmas and new year period can be fun and is a time when we tend to let ourselves go and not worry too much about whether what we are eating is good for us or even for our teeth. Many dentists would probably also put their hands up and admit to being more relaxed about the amount of chocolates that we consume at this time of the year.  Despite this though, it is a good idea to bear in mind the potential damage that can be done over this period and that, by taking a few simple steps, you can really help to protect your teeth and gums with just a little more care.

At the SG Dental and Implant Centre, we hope that all of our patients have a great time over the period and our team offers a few simple suggestions below to help you get through it with your oral health intact.

Keep up your teeth cleaning regime

This is perhaps the most important suggestion of all, yet one that can prove trickier at this time of the year. Even those of us who regularly brush and floss our teeth on a daily basis can find it more challenging during the festivities. If you have kids especially, it can be a tiring time as well as an enjoyable one. By the end of the day, all you can think about is sleep and bed. It is really important though that you make the effort to still brush and floss your teeth. It only takes a few minutes to do this and after a day when it is likely that many sticky and high sugar foods have been eaten, it is especially important. The same applies for your kids. They may well be overly tired and hyped up on sugar but even if you have to brush them for them, make sure that they go to bed with their teeth cleaned well.

If you are travelling away to relatives or friends, don’t forget to pack your toothbrush and floss. In fact, it could be a good time to treat yourself to a new brush so that you enter the new year with bristles that are new and efficient at removing plaque and food debris.

Watch your alcohol intake

Most of us increase our alcohol intake at this time of the year if we drink alcohol at all. This can help us to relax but can also have quite a few well known side effects. If you are hosting the festivities do remember to provide non alcoholic drinks for those that don’t consume alcohol or who are trying to cut down. Even those who do drink will benefit from mixing alcoholic drinks with non alcoholic ones so that they don’t become dehydrated.

Alcohol is associated with an increased risk of gum disease, especially if consumption is quite high. There is also a risk that, if you have quit smoking in the past, a few too many drinks could see you tempted to start again, even if this seems innocent enough with ‘just one’ Christmas cigar after the meal. Making sure that your alcohol intake remains moderate means that there is less chance that you will succumb to this temptation.

Finally, alcohol consumption is one of the key factors involved in many accidents and even physical altercations. Even a fairly innocuous fall or collision with an object can cause injury, and most dentists, including our own Burton dental clinic, are likely to have to treat a few patients when we reopen, for broken or cracked teeth that have occurred in this way. By all means, enjoy yourself but do drink any alcohol in moderation.

Stay hydrated

We mentioned in the previous section that alcohol is often linked with gum disease if drunk regularly or to excess. The main reason for this is that it causes dehydration and a dry mouth, as some of us will have found after a big night out! Without saliva to wash bacteria away, the amount of bacteria that can potentially lead to gingivitis and peri-implantitis will almost certainly increase, and over time this can become quite serious. While regular visits to the dental hygienist can help to keep this under control, prevention is better than cure and making sure that you drink plenty of water will help to counteract this.  You are also likely to find that you have more energy for the day if you do this too.

Eat cheese! (in moderation)

Perhaps a bit of an outlier when it comes to oral health care advice at Christmas but it is a surprisingly effective one. While it is widely known that sugar leads to tooth decay, what is less well known is that the bacteria that eat the sugar, then produce acids and it is this that damages the enamel and allows the bacteria to enter the inner part of the tooth.

One simple way to help neutralise the acidity of your mouth following a meal is to eat a small amount of cheese. If you are worried about your weight or aren’t particularly fond of cheese, you don’t need to worry. It only takes a small cube of cheese to start this process.

Naturally there are many other things that you can do such as minimise the amount of chocolates and sweets that you eat but we suspect that most of you will ignore that advice at this time of the year. Just following the four easy pieces of advice above though should be very beneficial for the oral health of our Burton patients.

Once the festive period has come to a close and we are open again, we will be able to see you if any damage has been done to your teeth or if you want to book a check up or dental hygienist appointment. You can do this by calling SG Dental and Implant Centre on 01283 845345.