Oral Health Care and Hygiene
Posted on 26-12-2022 03:22 am
Hello there, and welcome to our Oral-Hygiene Instruction video. I'm Dr. Alec Eidelman with the Cambridge Health Alliance and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
Today we are going to be talking about some very important recommendations and guidelines for children and caretakers as it relates to their oral health. Some of the things that you will well know already are the impacts that your dietary choices will have on your child's health, as well as how to maintain their hygiene.
One of the most important topics that we will be talking about for maintaining proper oral health for children, adolescents, and adults of all ages is the dietary choices you make. To maintain proper oral health, there are a few things that we always must do, one of which is to eat the right and healthy foods for each person.
We recognize that people come from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, and certain foods are much more popular for different people. However, we do want to make sure that we are giving you proper information about which foods might put you at a higher risk or your children at a higher risk for producing something called cavities. Cavities will be a problem with your teeth where bacteria grows on them and, unfortunately, makes them weaker, and they are more prone to having toothaches or other further problems that can develop from a cavity.
For a cavity to form, you need some kind of food, some kind of germs and bacteria, and also, a healthy tooth surface. When those three things meet together, that is where the opportunity for cavities to happen.
We, thankfully, have many defenses against having cavities form. Some of them are brushing and flossing as we've discussed. And the other ones are your natural saliva.
Your saliva and spit contain many different elements and nutrients to be able to maintain your oral health. Having proper saliva is very healthy. But to get back to our diet, we want to make sure that there is a proper plan for having the right amount of sugar in everyone's diet. We all know that children enjoy sweet foods that might have more sugar in them than other foods.
It's important to be able to talk about which foods and beverages might have higher amounts of sugar in them and how to be able to make those a-little-bit-healthier choices.
One of the ways to make healthier choices around sugary beverages is to have juice with a little bit of water in it or might have no added sugars to them. While many people do have soda and other carbonated beverages, what, unfortunately, these beverages have is some element of acidity.
Acidity is the actual bubbles and carbonation within soda. This acidic environment is what can, unfortunately, make the tooth more able and at higher risk of having a cavity. The longer time that the carbonated beverage with acid or sugar is on the tooth without it being brushed away or cleaned through other means, the higher the chance of developing a cavity.
We live in a world where there are many different choices that you can make about the foods that you and your children may have. It is important to be able to understand what some of the consequences might be for these. Having foods that are harder, stickier, and chewier, such as hard candy and other things that are very sweet, puts our teeth at increased risk of developing and making cavities, or even, unfortunately, breaking teeth.
It's very important for children, especially those at younger ages that might be teething, to be eating only food or things that are appropriate for teething. One other important thing to keep in mind when having chewier or stickier foods is that we want to make sure that we rinse with water or brush our teeth right afterward.
Another important topic within the actual discussion of diet is having some kind of choices around breast milk for infants.
It is very healthy and recommended by many organizations within the medical and dental profession for children and infants to have breast milk up to the right age. It's important to be talking to your primary care physician, your pediatrician, or other health professionals about ways to be able to wean your child off of breast milk at the appropriate age.
One thing that's very important to keep in mind when it comes to either having a bottle with milk in it or other juices or beverages inside of a bottle is that we do not want to put any infants to sleep with a bottle. It sometimes can increase their risk of having something called early childhood cavities, which is an unfortunate consequence of a child, an infant, having some kind of sugary substance coating their teeth throughout the night.
This puts them at a much higher risk of developing problems in the mouth. There are many resources and other available articles to be able to help make healthy choices when it comes to a child's diet. We do recognize that people from different backgrounds, have different tastes around other foods, but we want to make sure that they are well-informed about the choices that they make. MyPlate is one of the most credible and well-established materials to help with making these choices. We hope that you found the information and materials presented in the Oral-Hygiene Instruction videos that we are providing somewhat helpful for providing additional information about promoting healthy oral habits.
We understand that every person is different, but it's very important to have some shared understanding around some of the things that we know will help protect your oral health and those of your children. One thing that we do want to make sure of is that you visit any of our partners that have a lot of the evidence and also, guidelines specifically written down so that you can reference it whenever you feel like you will want some more information.
Thank you for your attention, and for also wanting to promote some kind of oral health instruction and hygiene in your daily practices. We hope that everyone can find the right resources that are correct for them to be able to promote optimal oral health and systemic health because one thing that we do understand is that good oral health promotes good overall health.