Dental Care - Foods that Promote Good Oral Hyigene

Hello, once again I am Dr. Kelly with Kelly Dentistry and we have been talking about maintaining good oral hygiene. We started with talking about good home care and now we will talk about good dietary habits.

We have a different variety of foods here. We have some good foods and some bad foods as you can probably guess. We will start with the good foods. We want to make sure that we get enough iron, enough Vitamin C, enough Vitamin D, enough calcium. So, these are some of the things that you want to look for are oranges and apple and some nuts. Oranges and apples are good for the vitamins, and then the nuts are good for the iron. Then you also want to think about yoghurt and cheeses which is good for the calcium and the Vitamin D. The reason why you want to have these types of vitamins is because calcium actually helps with maintaining strong bones and strong teeth. The Vitamin D helps absorb that calcium, so you want to definitely do Vitamin D. Vitamin C is good for preventing bleeding gums, so its definitely good to have your Vitamin C. If there is a lack of iron you can have inflamed tongue or burning sensation of the tongue, so you definitely want to make sure you get your iron. These all contribute to having a good dental or oral hygiene.

Then we have some of these other items that may not be as good. We do have gum, now this is actually a good gum, in that it is sugarless and it has xylitol. Xylitol helps prevent cavities, so this is a good gum to have. It helps promotes salivation of your mouth, so for people who have dry mouth they can use this sugarless gum. So, its a good candy or gum to have. But these other candies that are hard candy or sticky candy, tacky candy, they are not so good because they cling to your teeth and they stay on your teeth, or they may break your teeth, such as the hard candy. They actually can cause cavities in your teeth. If you have to use these candies then make sure at least that you suck on this, a hard candy, after you eat the sticky candy that you brush your teeth. Then you have cookies here too, and cookies are not good either because they have carbohydrates in there, but also cause cavities. They have the sugar that also cause the cavities. So, we have finished talking about good dietary habits. We talked about good home care. I just want to refresh that you want to make sure you brush twice a day, make sure you floss once a day, and make sure you use a mouth rinse at least once a day or you can use it twice a day. You want to make sure that you go to visit the dentist at least every six months.